The Cinque Terre (Çinque Taere in the local dialect) are a rugged stretch of coast on the eastern Ligurian Riviera, located in the province of La Spezia between Punta Mesco (Mesco Point) and Punta di Montenero (Montenero Point), where you can find five villages, or, as people used to call them, “lands”, listed hereafter from west to east: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, Riomaggiore.
Thanks to the geographical and anthropic features of their territory, the Cinque Terre are one of the main tourist attractions of the Riviera of La Spezia and of Liguria in general. Their hilly orographic context, naturally uneven and rough, has been softened by the construction of terraces and cultivated strips of land, and falls down to the sea steeply sloping. Where the sea trickles into the land along a winding line you’ll find the villages, built so as to follow the natural shape of the hills.
The work of man, over the centuries, has shaped the territory, through the construction of the famous terraces on the slopes facing the sea, using a particular agricultural technique designed to exploit as much as possible the land that slopes steeply down to the sea, and which has now transformed this territory into one of the most characteristic and charming landscapes in Liguria.
In 1997, at the instance of the Province of La Spezia, Cinque Terre, together with Porto Venere and the islands of Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto were included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
In 1998 the Ministry of Environment has created the Protected Marine Area of Cinque Terre for the protection of the environment, the defence and valorisation of the biological resources, the divulgation and promotion of a socio-economic development compatible with the naturalistic and landscape importance of the area.
In 1999 has then been created the Cinque Terre National Park for the conservation of ecological equilibrium, the protection of the landscape, the safeguard of the anthropological values of the area.
Porto Venere is an Italian town with a population of 3691 inhabitants in the Province of La Spezia, Liguria. Considering the extension of its urban territory, it’s the smallest town in the Province of La Spezia.
Since 1997 Porto Venere, together the islands of Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto and the Cinque Terre, has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
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