Cinque Terre Region
Discover Cinque Terre Region
A concise introduction to Cinque Terre Region, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
The Cinque Terre are five villages on a steep stretch of the Ligurian coast between Levanto and Portovenere, built onto cliffs that drop straight into the sea. From west to east they are Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore.
They have been a national park since 1999 and were inscribed by UNESCO in 1997, together with Portovenere and the islands, as a cultural landscape — the listing is for the terraced hillsides as much as for the villages.
Four of the five sit on the water. Corniglia is the exception, on a headland about a hundred metres up, reached from its station by a brick staircase of more than three hundred steps or by a shuttle bus.
A single railway line runs through the cliffs and links all five in minutes, which is the practical fact that shapes every visit here: the villages are close together by train and very slow to reach by road.