Cinque Terre

Five villages that decline to be one place

Choosing where to base yourself is a decision that really matters here, because the villages are not interchangeable. One has sand and a promenade and feels like a small resort. Another is a working harbour with boats hauled up into the square. A third sits high above the water with no harbour at all. Read the character of each before booking, because a stay in the wrong one produces a mild, persistent sense of having missed the point.

What links them is worth understanding too. A railway line stitched through the headlands surfaces at each village in turn, and boats run the coast in the warm months. Footpaths also connect the villages, some along the cliff and some climbing over the shoulder of the hill behind, and they are a reason to come. Sections close from time to time after heavy weather, so check before assuming a route.

The terraces are the landscape

Every slope above these villages has been cut into steps and held up with stone walls, generation after generation, so that vines could be grown on ground that has no business supporting agriculture. Nothing here is decorative. The whole visible landscape is an enormous piece of labour that happens to be beautiful, and walking it teaches you a great deal about the place.

When to come

May, June and September are the months that work. Heat on an exposed cliff path in high summer is a genuine problem, and the villages themselves become uncomfortably full. Late spring gives green terraces and long light for walking; September gives warmer water and a slightly calmer coast.

Couples usually do better staying overnight than visiting for a day. Everything shifts once the last trains and boats have gone: the harbours empty, tables come out, and the villages briefly belong to the people who live in them.

Whether it is expensive

Costs here run higher than the modesty of the buildings suggests, and the reason is supply. These are small villages hemmed in by protected land, with no room to build, absorbing a great many visitors. Rooms are correspondingly scarce and correspondingly priced.

You have real levers, though. A room without a sea view, in a village further from the busiest, or up the slope rather than on the harbour, changes the picture substantially. Basing yourself in one of the larger towns at either end of the line is a real saving and costs you only the evenings. Because availability is so tight and varies so much by village, comparing current stay and experience options across your dates is worth doing properly here.

What is worth paying for

The paths, and the time to walk them slowly — though walking here is not simply free. The coastal sections linking the villages sit inside a national park and carry an entry ticket, while the higher routes over the shoulder of the hill are generally open ground and quieter for it. Beyond that, a boat trip along the coast, because the villages make sense seen from the water — you finally understand why each one sits exactly where it does. Sand is scarce along this shore, so swimming mostly means rocks, ladders and clear deep water.

Where to stay

Splurge

A small clifftop hotel or restored villa set above one of the villages, with a garden, a terrace and a view down the coast. There are very few of these and they book far ahead. Right for travellers who want quiet, a view and a short walk down into village life whenever they choose.

Mid-range

A harbour-front room or small guesthouse inside one of the villages, simple, well kept, with shutters that open onto noise and colour. You are in the middle of everything, which is the point and occasionally the drawback. Good for couples who intend to walk all day and want dinner downstairs.

Good value

An apartment or family guesthouse in a village up the hill, or in one of the towns beyond the park boundary. Space and value improve markedly and you lose immediacy. Ideal for anyone treating this coast as walking country with villages attached.

The coast at a glance