The structural setting of the eastern headland of the La Spezia Gulf (Punta Bianca promontory) provides some constraints on the contractional and extensional framework of the Northern Apennines--Northern Tyrrhenian Sea basin geodynamic system and allows a detailed reconstruction of a complex evolutionary path. Out-of-sequence thrusting is supposed in the inner side of the chain. Two different extensional events are identified; the older (early-middle Miocene) may be related to the imbrication of the deeper metamorphic units of the Apenninic thrust wedge. Younger extension fits very well into an eastward asymmetrical faulting framework, related to the opening of the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea basin, from the late Miocene to the Pliocene--Pleistocene (?). Well-exposed low-angle normal faults developed during this event. Extensional structures were then overprinted and reactivated by a mainly strike-slip regime in the Quaternary. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1995