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| Saremo felici se la visione potrà
donarvi alcune delle piacevoli sensazioni che si provano abitualmente nel
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“In Riomaggiore and cinque terre"
The Cinque Terre are five little towns - Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore - immersed in landscapes that are unique of their kind, blending the beauty of the beaches and the crystal clear sea with steep pathways often leading through rich vineyards and olive groves, pine woods and orchards of lemon trees. Like few other places in Italy or in the world, the natural environment of the Cinque Terre is doubly safeguarded: the Protected marine Area ensures and watches over the sea and its wealth of life, and the National park preserves and defends the landscape made up mostly of the dry stone walls built and mantained down the centuries at the cost of enormous labours.
As cars and other traffic are almost completely forbidden on the one hand, and because it is easy to reach by train on the other, the best way to enjoy the Cinque Terre is on your feet. For centuries the paths were the only means of communication between the towns and the only way to reach the vineyards and the kitchen gardens, which where in the past the only real economic resources of the area, along with fishing of course.
Still today, these same paths are the only means that allow us to explore the spirit of the Cinque Terre right to its very roots, to understand its beauty and, at the same time, the cultural importance of a landscape in which the hand of man has found they way to conciliate itself perfectly with nature.
The denomination Cinque Terre (or Five Lands) appears for the first time in the year 1419, when it was introduced by the humanist and geographer Giacomo Bracelli, notary public and Chancellor of Serenissima republic of Genoa. Into his "Orae Linguisticae Descriptio", saying 'et haec quinque vocantur quinque terre'.
The area of the Cinque Terre was certainly inhabited during Roman times. At the end of the 19th Century a number of tombs dating back to the period of the late Republic came to light as a result of landslides near the sanctuary of Soviore in the Comune of vernazza.
Legend has it that the manes of our little towns reach even further back. During the second Punic War, in fact, the Appuan Ligurians allied themselves with Hannible. after his defeat they were deported to Sannio and their lands assigned to Roman patrician families: Rubra, Vulnetia, Cornelia.
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