Exploring Cinque Terre, Italy’s Coastal Gem

On our second Saturday in Sestri Levante, we decided to visit the Cinque Terre to see it for ourselves. Cheryl had read that one of the best ways to appreciate the beauty of the Cinque Terre was from the water, so she had mapped out a plan to travel by rail to Monterosso al Mare, and then take the Cinque Terre ferry between a few of the cities before returning to Sestri by train from the last town.

The train from Sestri was packed with tourists, almost all headed for the Cinque Terre, just like us. We disembarked at Monterosso and walked out from the pink rail station directly onto the boardwalk along the beach.

Monterosso, the largest of the five villages, also has the nicest beach in the Cinque Terre. Unlike the small rocky beaches in the other towns, Monterosso’s is wide, flat, and sandy. During the summer season, the shoreline is packed shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists on beach chairs under umbrellas.

We walked to the northern end of the beach to see Il Gigante, “the giant”, in front of the former Villa Pastine, which is now a bathing resort.

Il Gigante was sculpted in 1910 out of reinforced concrete and iron. The 46 feet (14 meters) tall statue of Neptune, together with a large shell-shaped terrace, adorned the splendid Villa Pastine. Allied forces bombed the villa during the Second World War, damaging the sculpture, and a strong storm in 1966 further weakened the giant. Today, all that remains of the monumental sculpture is the head, the trunk, and one leg; the arms, trident, shell, and right leg are all missing.

After visiting Il Gigante, we walked back to the south end of the beach and spent a few minutes exploring the shops along the narrow streets of Monterosso before boarding the ferry to our next stop.

The ferry ride gave us a spectacular view of the next village, Vernazza. From the water, we could see the town’s buildings climbing up a little canyon, surrounded by hills terraced with vineyards. This perspective also allowed us to appreciate the ruggedness of the terrain and why it took so long before the Cinque Terre could be connected to the rest of the country by road.

As we got off the ferry, Vernazza’s harbor presented us with one of the prettiest and most colorful scenes we’ve seen in all of Italy:

Vernazza was much more “vertical” than Monterosso had been. We decided to plunge into the town, climbing out of the throng of tourists along the main shopping street and climbing up (way up!) to a restaurant perched on a cliffside for lunch.

Finally, we reached our destination: Ristorante La Torre. We had worked up quite an appetite by then!

The region of Liguria is renowned for its basil pesto, so we both decided to indulge in dishes with this luscious sauce for lunch. Cheryl had the traditional trofie al pesto, with little twists of pasta, while I tried a local specialty, testarolo al pesto. “Testarolo” is a dense, slightly spongy crepe made from a batter of wheat flours stone-ground by traditional mills mixed with water and salt, then baked in a cast-iron dome called a testo over a beech and chestnut wood fire. After baking, it is cut into diamond shapes, blanched in boiling water, and served with Ligurian pesto. It was unique, rich, and marvelous.

Our view from our table was breathtaking, as we looked out over the rocky peninsula that shelters Vernazza’s harbor, crowned with the ruins of the ancient tower from which the restaurant takes its name.

As we ate, we wondered how the restaurant got all of its food and other supplies up the hill. There were no roads to the restaurant from the harbor—only a series of uneven, winding rock staircases. We asked our waiter, who told us that the restaurant’s owner—a man well into his 70s—brings everything up each day in an Orec Land Surf, which is basically a powered wheelbarrow on tracks like a tank. He refuses to teach anyone else how to do it, and the staff wonders how they will operate the restaurant when he’s gone.

After a relaxing and delicious lunch, we carefully negotiated the steep and uneven steps back down to the port. From here, we had a nice view of the buildings of Vernazza as they tumbled down the canyon toward the water’s edge.

We re-boarded the ferry to head to our third and final destination, Manarola. As the ferry exited the small harbor at Vernazza, we got a good look at where we had eaten lunch an hour earlier.

On the way to Manarola, the ferry passed by the Cinque Terre town of Corniglia. It is the only one of the five towns without a harbor, so it’s accessible only by land from one of the other towns.

Before long, the ferry approached the town of Manarola, which winds from the vineyards above down a narrow canyon to the water.

Once we were ashore, we explored the narrow streets of Manarola and enjoyed a mid-afternoon gelato (including an incredible variegato amarena, a creamy vanilla gelato laden with dark sour cherries and swirled with cherry sauce) before heading to the train station for the return journey to Sestri Levante.

After our day in the Cinque Terre, it was easy for us to understand why the Italian government protected the five towns and the natural landscape surrounding them by designating the area as Cinque Terre National Park in 1999. At just 4,300 acres, it is the smallest national park in Italy, but also the densest with 5,000 permanent residents, not to mention the thousands of visitors it attracts each day. UNESCO has also included the Cinque Terre as a World Heritage Site, noting that it is a “living cultural landscape of extraordinary value, representing the harmonious interaction between man and nature.” These two designations help to encourage the development of responsible tourism, while at the same time preserving for future visitors the history and authenticity that make the area so popular.