The classic view
The village as a coloured mass above rock, from the southern path.
This Photo was taken by Timothy A. Gonsalves. Feel free to use my photos, but please mention me as the author. I would much appreciate if you send me an email tagooty@yahoo.com or write on my talk pag — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Sjaak Kempe from Groningen, The Netherlands — CC BY 2.0 · Sjaak Kempe from Groningen, The Netherlands — CC BY 2.0 · Bruno Rijsman — CC BY-SA 2.0
**Coloured houses stacked on a rock dropping straight into the sea — the image you know of the Cinque Terre** — and the oldest of the five villages. ⚠ **It has neither beach nor harbour**: **the rock falls vertically into the water**, **and boats are winched up onto the quay** — ⚠ **and you swim off flat rocks**, not sand. ✅ **The famous view is from one point**: **from the start of the Nessun Dorma path** or the quay to the south — **where the village reads as a coloured mass above black rock**, ✅ **the best-known view in Liguria**. ✅ **Around it are terraced vineyards** on very steep slopes — **producing *Sciacchetrà***, a rare sweet wine. ⚠ **From Manarola starts the "Path of Love"** — ⚠ **closed for many years after a rockfall**; **check its status**.
The village as a coloured mass above rock, from the southern path.
Wine terraces on steep slopes above the village.
Clear water at the quay with an iron ladder.
Manarola, 19017 La Spezia, Italy
**Thousands of kilometres of dry-stone wall built by farmers on impossible slopes — and the reason these villages exist.** ✅ **The original problem**: **the coast here is a steep cliff dropping to the sea** — ⚠ **no plain, no level ground, and no soil that stays put**; **rain sweeps everything into the water**. ✅ **The solution**: **building dry-stone walls** (***muretti***) — ⚠ **without mortar, stone on stone** — **holding back a narrow strip of level soil behind each**; **repeated hundreds of times up the slope** until the cliff becomes a stair. ⚠ **The scale astonishes**: **the total length of these walls in the Cinque Terre is estimated in thousands of kilometres** — ✅ **compared with the Great Wall of China for sheer human labour** — built over centuries. ✅ **What was planted**: **vines** — producing the rare sweet **Sciacchetrà** — **and olives and lemons**. ⚠ **The crisis today**: **many terraces have been abandoned** because the work is hard and unprofitable, ⚠ **and abandoned walls collapse** — **and their collapse causes the mudslides**; ⚠ **the 2011 flood that destroyed Vernazza was partly a consequence**. ✅ **So maintaining the terraces is a safety question, not only a heritage one.**
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