Visit Genoa & Cinque Terre, Italy travel guide

Visit Genoa & Cinque Terre, Italy travel guide, Genoa travel, The Italian Riviera, Italy travel vlog, Italy tourism & vacations, Beaches in Genoa and Cinque Terre Italy
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Welcome to Genoa
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Italy's largest sea port is indefatigably contradictory, full at once of grandeur, squalor, sparkling light and deep shade. It's a gateway to the Riviera for many travellers today, but a weighty architectural heritage speaks of its former glory – the Most Serene Republic of Genoa ruled over the Mediterranean waves during the 12th to the 13th centuries – and history feels alive in Genoa. No more is this true than in its extensive old city, an often confronting reminder of premodern life with its twisting maze of caruggi (narrow streets), largely intact. Emerge blinking from this thrillingly dank heart to Via Garibaldi and the splendid Enlightenment-era gold-leaf halls of the Unesco-listed Palazzi dei Rolli.

The city's once-tatty port area now hosts museums and a number of eating and drinking options. Its old town, too, has had its own far more organic revitalisation, with a bright new crop of fashionable shops, restaurants and bars lighting the way.


Welcome to Cinque Terre
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Set amid some of the most dramatic coastal scenery on the planet, these five ingeniously constructed fishing villages can bolster the most jaded of spirits. A Unesco World Heritage Site since 1997, Cinque Terre isn't the undiscovered Eden it once was but, frankly, who cares? Sinuous paths traverse seemingly impregnable cliff sides, while a 19th-century railway line cut through a series of coastal tunnels ferries the footsore from village to village. Thankfully cars were banned over a decade ago.

Rooted in antiquity, Cinque Terre's five villages date from the early medieval period. While much of this fetching vernacular architecture remains, Cinque Terre's unique historical draw is the steeply terraced cliffs bisected by a complicated system of fields and gardens that have been hacked, chiselled, shaped and layered over the course of nearly two millennia. The extensive muretti (low stone walls) can be compared to the Great Wall of China in their grandeur and scope.