La Spezia: Your Gateway to Cinque Terre's Painted Villages

The Five Villages of Cinque Terre

These five ancient fishing villages – Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore – cling to this unforgiving coastline like they've grown from the rock itself. Each has its own character, its own particular way of capturing the light. I visited them all in a single long day, though I could have spent a week and still found new corners, new views, new ways the afternoon sun transformed those painted walls.

Riomaggiore: The southernmost village and your first encounter if you're coming from La Spezia – just twelve minutes by train. The colorful houses tumble down the ravine to a tiny harbor where fishing boats still rest between the rocks. The main street, Via Colombo, tunnels through the lower village, genuinely charming in a way that's less polished than the postcard shots suggest. Which somehow makes it better, more honest. I watched an old fisherman mending nets while tourists photographed him, and he ignored us all with magnificent indifference.

Manarola: The photographer's favorite, and mine too if I'm being truthful. At sunset, those jumbled pastel houses glow golden above the rocky swimming coves, and the whole village seems to levitate in that strange Mediterranean light that turns everything into memory even as you're living it. The Sciacchetrà dessert wine they make here comes from grapes grown on terraces so steep and precarious you wonder how any human tends them. It tastes like honey and apricots and the patience of centuries.

Corniglia: The smallest village and the only one without direct access to the sea – it perches on a clifftop a hundred meters above the water, reached by 382 stone steps or a shuttle bus for those wise enough to save their knees. Quieter than its sisters, more authentically itself somehow, with fewer tourists and better gelato. I sat in the village square and watched absolutely nothing happen for half an hour, which felt like the most Italian thing I did all day.

Vernazza: Many travelers call this the most beautiful of the five, and I won't argue. The natural harbor, the pastel houses arranged just so, the church of Santa Margherita and the medieval Doria Castle ruins creating a composition so perfect it seems impossible that it simply evolved over centuries. But arrive early or stay late – midday brings tour groups that overwhelm the tiny piazza, and the magic retreats into doorways and shadows until the crowds depart.

Monterosso al Mare: The northernmost and largest village, split between old town and new, with an actual sandy beach – the only real beach among the five. It's more resort-like, less dramatically vertical, but it offers amenities the others lack: beach chairs, restaurants with tables, room to breathe. If you're traveling with small children or prefer your coastline accessible, this is your village. The others make you work for their beauty. Monterosso gives it more freely.

Hiking the Coastal Trails

The famous Sentiero Azzurro – the Blue Trail – once connected all five villages in a continuous coastal path worn smooth by centuries of feet. But this is earthquake country, landslide country, and portions of the trail close regularly when the mountains reclaim their territory. Check the trail status before you plan your day. When I visited, the Monterosso-Vernazza and Vernazza-Corniglia sections were reliably open, but these things change with the weather and the seasons.

I hiked the stretch from Monterosso to Vernazza on a June morning before the heat settled in, and it took me about two hours at a contemplative pace – stopping often to look back at the coastline, to watch the way the light changed on the water, to let faster hikers pass. The trail is moderately difficult, steep in places where stone steps climb through terraced vineyards and wind through chestnut forests, then emerge suddenly onto exposed cliffside paths where the Mediterranean spreads below you like hammered silver. The views are extraordinary throughout – the kind that make you stop walking and just breathe.

Bring water, start early before the Mediterranean sun climbs high, and wear proper hiking shoes with good traction. The trails are ancient, uneven, sometimes slick with morning dew or loose with pebbles. I saw tourists attempting these paths in flip-flops and dress sandals, and I winced for their ankles. This is not a boardwalk stroll. Respect the terrain and it will reward you.

If hiking doesn't call to you – or if your ship schedule doesn't allow the time – take the train between villages and explore each on foot. You'll cover more ground, spend less energy on steep climbs, and save your hiking legs for your favorite stretch. There's no shame in the easier route. The villages themselves offer plenty of steps and hills to climb.

The Food of Liguria

Liguria invented pesto – pesto alla Genovese – and the basil grown on these coastal hillsides has a different flavor than anywhere else on earth, sweeter and more aromatic, smaller leaves that concentrate the essential oils. The traditional version combines this precious basil with Pecorino and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses, pine nuts from the maritime pines, garlic, coarse sea salt, and the local olive oil that tastes faintly of the Mediterranean breeze. They pound it by hand in marble mortars, though most restaurants use blenders now and pretend they don't. Eat it on trofie pasta – the twisted local shape that catches the sauce perfectly – or slathered thick on warm focaccia. Don't accept imitations. You'll know the difference the moment it touches your tongue.

Speaking of focaccia: the Ligurian version is an art form, dimpled and golden, brushed with olive oil and scattered with coarse salt, sometimes studded with olives or onions or rosemary. But seek out focaccia di Recco if you find it – a thin, cheese-filled flatbread that emerges from wood-fired ovens crispy and blistered, the cheese molten and stretching when you tear it. It's simultaneously delicate and deeply satisfying. I ate an entire one standing at a bakery counter in Monterosso and regretted nothing.

Farinata – chickpea flatbread baked in wide copper pans until the edges crisp and the center stays creamy – is the local street food, sold by the slice and eaten warm. Fresh anchovies appear on every menu, fried golden or marinated with lemon and olive oil, and they bear no resemblance to the salty tinned things you know from pizza toppings. These are sweet, delicate, revelatory.

The local wines deserve your attention: Sciacchetrà, that honey-sweet dessert wine from impossible terraced vineyards, and Vermentino, the crisp dry white that pairs perfectly with the abundant seafood. They're not famous beyond Liguria's borders, which means they're relatively affordable and utterly authentic. Order them without hesitation. The sommelier might raise an eyebrow – these wines don't have the pedigree of Tuscany or Piedmont – but your palate won't care about pedigree when it's this happy.

The Gulf of Poets and Naval Heritage

La Spezia sits at the head of a deep, protected gulf that the Italians call Golfo dei Poeti – the Gulf of Poets – a name earned in the nineteenth century when the Romantic poets discovered this coastline and never quite recovered from it. Lord Byron swam these waters, challenging the sea with the same reckless passion he brought to everything. Percy Bysshe Shelley lived briefly in nearby Lerici with Mary Shelley, writing some of his finest verses while watching storms roll across the gulf, until the sea claimed him in 1822 when his boat went down in a summer squall not far from this shore. The gulf remembers its poets. Their ghosts linger in the names of waterfront promenades and the way the light falls at certain hours.

But this protected harbor attracted more than poets. The same strategic position and deep waters that drew Shelley's contemplative gaze made naval commanders take notice. In 1869, the newly unified Kingdom of Italy established the Arsenale Militare Marittimo – the Arsenal of La Spezia – transforming this sleepy port into one of the nation's most important naval bases. The city developed rapidly during the industrial era that followed, shipyards and naval installations spreading along the waterfront, workers' neighborhoods climbing the hillsides. It became, and remains, the headquarters of the Italian Navy – a working military port where frigates and submarines rest between deployments.

If you have time before or after your Cinque Terre adventures, consider visiting the Museo Tecnico Navale – the Naval Technical Museum – housed within the Arsenal complex. It's one of the world's finest naval museums, though rarely crowded with tourists who rush past on their way to the painted villages. The collection spans centuries of Italian maritime history: figureheads and navigation instruments, ship models and weapons, the evolution of naval architecture displayed with surprising poetry. You'll need to arrange access in advance, as it's within an active military installation, but the effort rewards the curious.

Walking the waterfront, you'll see this dual nature everywhere: cruise ships and naval vessels sharing the harbor, tourists consulting maps while naval officers walk purposefully past, the graceful nineteenth-century arcades of Via del Prione standing near modern military infrastructure. La Spezia never pretends to be a resort town. It's a working port that happens to sit next to extraordinary beauty, and I found that honesty refreshing.

Port Map

Tap markers to explore La Spezia and Cinque Terre