Cinque Terre · Italy
Cinque Terre with family
Five villages stitched to the cliffs by footpaths and vines.
Build the week out of short train rides and one beach, and treat the footpaths as an optional extra rather than the itinerary. Families come unstuck here for a single reason: they plan the walking holiday the photographs promise, discover on the first afternoon that a cliff path with children is a different proposition entirely, and spend the rest of the week improvising. Plan it the other way round and this is an unusually easy place to be with children.
The railway is the thing that makes it work
Everything is minutes apart by train, and that changes the shape of a family day completely. You can go out for two hours and come back. A nap, a change of clothes, a forgotten hat — none of these costs you the afternoon, because the room is never far away. Nowhere else on this stretch of coast gives you that, and it is worth more than any amount of planning.
Two warnings go with it. Stations are small and platforms narrow, so hold onto small children properly rather than loosely. And the line runs mostly inside the hill, which means the ride itself is a tunnel rather than a view — the scenery is at either end of it, not during.
What each part of the day asks of a child
| The thing | What it demands | Works from about |
|---|---|---|
| The sand beach at Monterosso | Nothing. Shallow entry, space to dig, a promenade behind it | Any age |
| A train hop to the next village | Ten minutes of standing up, often in a crowd | Any age, with a hand held |
| Wandering one village | Steps, and more steps, and a steep street at the end of it | Walking confidently, and a carrier rather than a pram for anyone smaller |
| The low coastal section at the southern end | A gentle level path, when it is open | Early school age |
| The northern coastal sections | Long climbs, exposed drops, no shade and no way to cut it short | Older children who genuinely like walking |
| Swimming off the rocks | Ladders into deep water, and confidence in it | Strong swimmers only |
| A boat along the coast in the warm months | Sitting still and getting wet | Any age that tolerates a boat |
The row that catches people is the one in the middle. Sections of the coastal path are advertised as easy walks between villages and the northern ones are not: they climb hard, run along drops, and offer nowhere to stop and turn back comfortably once you are committed.
Where to sleep, briefly
Monterosso for a family with young children, almost every time — it has the beach, the most level ground, the widest choice of rooms and the least difficult arrival by car. Corniglia is the one to avoid with a pushchair or a toddler, because it sits above the sea and the climb from its station is the first thing you meet and the last thing you do each day. The area guide covers the rest of the choice properly.
The week that actually works
Anchor the days on the beach and go out from it. One village each morning, back for the middle of the day, the sea in the afternoon, and dinner early because everyone is tired. Keep one walk in the plan — the gentle one — and treat it as a thing you might do rather than a thing you will.
Older children change the arithmetic entirely. Once a child can walk a few hours and enjoy it, the terraces open up, the northern sections become the point of the trip, and the reward is a coastline earned on foot rather than looked at from a train window. That is a different holiday, and a very good one.
What to bring
A carrier for anyone not walking reliably, proper shoes for everyone else, more water than seems necessary on the paths, and something for the middle of a hot day that does not involve being outside. Sun comes off the sea and off the rock at once here, and there is very little shade anywhere on the walking.
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