Cinque Terre

Of the five it alone has a broad sand beach. Most of it is paid ground where you hire an umbrella and free stretches are left in between, while a short tunnel separates the old village from the beach quarter.

Of the five only Vernazza has a harbour boats can enter, and the square sits right at the water. Climbing the Doria tower beside it puts the roofs below you, on a stair so narrow that people must give way. In the 2011 landslide mud filled the square.

Alone among the five it does not touch the sea but sits up on a headland. A zigzag stair of three hundred and eighty-odd steps climbs from the station, and a shuttle bus waits below for those who would sooner not. That is why it has the fewest people.

Terraced vineyards cover the slope behind the village with a narrow walkway threading up through them. From December into January a nativity scene made of light bulbs burns on the hillside and shows from the water, and all summer people jump in off the rocks.

Houses stack upward along a narrow ravine, with a stream running culverted under the main street. Boats are hauled out of the water and parked in the lane, where on rough days they double as a breakwater. At sunset the rocks by the water fill up.

A landslide kept it shut twelve years and it opened again in summer 2024. It is walked one way only, from Riomaggiore toward Manarola. Entry means booking a time slot, and a fee is added to the Cinque Terre card. At about 900 metres it is over in half an hour.

Which sections are open changes from one to the next, so check the day's notice first. The coastal stretch between Corniglia and Manarola has been shut by landslip for years, and that gap goes by train or inland. A card is needed from April to October.

Dry stone walls step the slope into terraces, and their total length is often set against that of the Great Wall. No tractor can climb it, so a one-seat rack rail carries grapes and soil up and down. When a wall goes, it is rebuilt by hand.

A headland climbing west out of Monterosso, with the ruins of a hermitage on the top. From here the five villages line up in a single view for the first time, and though the climb does not let up, pine shade runs most of the way.

At the southern end sits a harbour town, listed by UNESCO together with the five villages. Under the church of Saint Peter out on the rock the sea has cut a cave, and Byron is said to have swum from it. A boat links it to Riomaggiore.

A small Marian sanctuary on the ridge behind Riomaggiore, reached by steps and footpath from the village in just over sixty minutes. From its railing the Cinque Terre shoreline runs on towards Portovenere. Bring water: the climb gets almost no shade.

The largest island in Liguria, facing Portovenere, a crossing of minutes in the little harbour boats. A hill path loops the island, and caves pierce its seaward cliffs. Shops are few on the island, so take food with you.

Lerici closes off the Gulf of La Spezia to the east, a harbour with its castle looking down from the hill. Byron and Shelley stayed nearby, so the bay is called the Gulf of Poets. A seaside path carries on on foot to San Terenzo.

One train stop north of Monterosso, with a wider beach and finer sand than any of the five villages. When a swell rolls in, surfers paddle out. It has more rooms than inside the Cinque Terre, so plenty of people stay here.

From spring, through the summer, to autumn boats link the five villages with Portovenere and Levanto. From the water the cliff-top villages line up together. Corniglia sits up on the cliff with no harbour, so boats skip it, and in rough seas the service stops.