Cinque Terre Park
Edited by:
Massimo Martini
Access
The Cinque Terre National Park can be reached mainly by train: all five villages have their own railway station along the Genoa-Pisa route operated by Trenitalia (TI), with stops in Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. Regional trains connect the stations frequently, particularly in summer. For those arriving from afar, the reference stations on long-distance trains are La Spezia Centrale in the south and Levanto in the north; from both, regional trains continue to the five villages. The car is not the recommended means of transport: the morphology of the territory makes the number of parking spaces scarce, the roads inside the villages are mainly pedestrian and the municipalities apply closed access during the high season. From La Spezia, it can be reached by car along the state road Via Aurelia or the motorway Genoa-Livorno with exit at La Spezia; from Levanto, follow the provincial road . The Park Authority offices are located in Riomaggiore, Via Discovolo, near Manarola Station. Park reception centres are active at all railway stations in the Cinque Terre and in La Spezia and Levanto. The Sentiero Verde Azzurro (SVA) - the main coastal path - is accessible with the Cinque Terre Card and in high season may be subject to a one-way compulsory route on the Monterosso-Vernazza section for flow management. The 4,591 hectare Cinque Terre Marine Protected Area flanks the land park and extends from Punta Mesco in the west to Punta Pineda in the east.
Introduction
The Cinque Terre National Park stretches along the Ligurian coastline in the province of La Spezia, in the municipalities of Riomaggiore, Vernazza, Monterosso al Mare, La Spezia (Tramonti area) and Levanto (Mesco area), covering an area of approximately 38.68 km². Established by the Decree of the President of the Republic of 6 October 1999 - published in the Official Gazette on 17 December 1999 - it is Italy's smallest national park in terms of surface area and at the same time the most densely populated, with around 4,000 inhabitants distributed among the five villages. The area has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997, a recognition that preceded the formal establishment of the park by two years. The park's identity is entirely man-made: for about a millennium, the inhabitants have shaped the steep slopes of the Ligurian Apennines - which slope steeply down to the Ligurian Sea - into a dense weave of terraced vineyards, the ciàn, supported by about 6,729 km of dry stone walls. The management and maintenance of this rural engineering system constitutes the park's primary conservation challenge.
Description
The territory of the park lies entirely within the coastal strip of the Ligurian Apennines, with the slopes falling directly into the sea to form cliffs, inlets and small bays with varied geological features. The geology reflects the structural complexity of the northern Apennines: zonified Riomaggiore sandstone outcrops with folded stratifications typical of flysch, alternating with metamorphic rocks and limestone. The highest point of the park is the hamlet of Prevo (municipality of Vernazza), at 208 metres above sea level - a height that makes the Circeo almost a benchmark for comparison. Only 300 hectares of the territory fall within the mountainous basin of the Vara river without overlooking the sea; the rest of the park is coastal, with the villages arranged in succession from east to west: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia - the only village not directly overlooking the sea and only accessible on foot or by train - Vernazza and Monterosso al Mare.
The landscape is the result of about a thousand years of collective work. Since the 11th-12th centuries, local communities have been crushing the rock to make walling boulders, building the terraced terraces known as ciàn, supported by a network of some 6,729 km of dry stone walls - a length comparable to a third of the earth's circumference. This rural architecture, built without any mechanisation and maintained only by manual labour from generation to generation, has allowed the cultivation of vines, olives and citrus fruits in an otherwise impractical environment. The wine produced on the terraces has given rise to the Cinque Terre DOC and its passito version, Sciacchetrà, a liqueur wine of great local tradition made from Bosco, Albarola and Vermentino grapes left to dry. The gradual agricultural abandonment of recent decades has led to the deterioration of low walls and the sliding of many terraces, with consequences on both the hydrogeological balance and the landscape. The park manages programmes to recover abandoned terraces and revive traditional wine-growing.
The spontaneous vegetation, where not suppressed by crops, reflects the Mediterranean climate of the Ligurian coast. Halophytic and psammophytic species such as sea fennel (Crithmum maritimum), maritime cineraria (Jacobaea maritima), wild violacea and Brassica robertiana grow on the cliffs exposed to the sea winds; Higher up, Mediterranean scrub with arboreal spurge (Euphorbia dendroides), mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus), alaterno, rosemary, thyme, helichrysum and lavender develops. Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster), Aleppo pine and chestnut appear in the back and ridge woodlands. Naturalised exotic species such as the agave, prickly pear and pittosporum, introduced in past centuries as ornamental plants, can be found in the rocky environments. The terrestrial fauna includes the dormouse (Glis glis), weasel, badger, fox, beech marten and wild boar; among the reptiles, the green lizard, wall lizard, coluber and coluber d'Aesculapius; among the birds, the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), the imperial raven (Corvus corax) and the herring gull (Larus michahellis). The seabed of the Marine Protected Area is home to prairies of Posidonia oceanica, sea fans and protected fish fauna.
The history of the five villages is deeply linked to the Republic of Genoa, which controlled maritime trade: Vernazza was the main trading port on the coast. The villages preserve medieval churches in Romanesque-Gothic style - the 14th-century church of San Giovanni Battista in Monterosso and Riomaggiore, the church of Santa Margherita d'Antiochia in Vernazza, the church of San Pietro in Corniglia - and a network of Marian shrines that can be reached from the ridge paths, including the Sanctuary of Nostra Signora di Montenero in Riomaggiore and that of Nostra Signora delle Grazie in Vernazza. The Via dell'Amore, the flat stretch connecting Riomaggiore to Manarola carved into the rock in the 1930s as an explosives depot, has become an iconic symbol of the Cinque Terre. With the Cinque Terre is closely linked the figure of the poet Eugenio Montale, originally from Genoa but with family roots in Monterosso, to whom a Literary Park is dedicated. UNESCO recognition in 1997 enshrined the value of the cultural landscape of the Cinque Terre as an exceptional testimony to the interaction between man and coastal nature in the Mediterranean.
The park's footpath network stretches over more than 130 km, with trails ranging from coastal paths to the ridge network. The Sentiero Verde Azzurro (SVA) - historical trail no. 2 of the La Spezia CAI - connects the five villages for about 12km with a difference in altitude of about 500m, with the highest point at Prevo (208m). The section between Riomaggiore and Manarola is called Via dell'Amore. In high season, the SVA Monterosso-Vernazza section is subject to one-way traffic flow management. The high trails allow loop routes from the individual villages through vineyards, forests and sanctuaries.
Information
General Data
Typology: National Park; UNESCO World Heritage Site (since 1997); Marine Protected Area (D.M. 12 December 1997)
Year of Establishment: 1999 (Presidential Decree 6 October 1999; G.U. no. 295 of 17 December 1999); UNESCO Heritage Site: 1997; Marine Protected Area: 1997
Managing body: Ente Parco Nazionale delle Cinque Terre
Reference body: Ministero dell'Ambiente e della Sicurezza Energetica
Territorial area 38.68 km²
Marine Protected Area area: 45.91 km²
Minimum altitude: 0m (sea level)
Maximum altitude: 208m
Maximum elevation: 208m - Prevo (Vernazza, SP)
Region(s): Liguria
Province(s): La Spezia
Municipalities concerned: La Spezia - Levanto - Monterosso al Mare - Riomaggiore - Vernazza
Official website: https://www.parconazionale5terre.it