The Cinque Terre National Park is one of Italy’s most frequently visited attractions for tourists. It’s no wonder; the place is stunning. Impossibly pretty pastel villages nestled on cliff-sides so steep as to beggar belief, all of which above the stunning backdrop of the aquamarine Mediterranean. However, despite hordes of tourists descending upon the Cinque Terre each year, the question needs to be asked, is it worth visiting?

UNDERSTAND

The Cinque Terre is not a single place - it refers to the national park called the Cinque Terre in the, which translates roughly to ‘5 lands,’ referring to the five famous villages inside the park - Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso. The Cinque Terre is on the UNESCO world heritage list. The park is located in the Italian region Liguria. The villages are famous mainly due to how stunning they are - picture five unique villages clinging to stunningly gorgeous hillsides over water so blue you’d swear it was painted on. You won’t be far off. The villages are famously isolated - in fact they were only accessible via boat or by walking from village to village until the late 19th century

THE DILEMmA

In the past few decades, tourism to Cinque Terre has boomed. While it was once a spot for “off-the-beaten-path” travelers, its postcard-worthy beauty has landed it on bucket lists, and now bus tours and cruise liners have made Cinque Terre part of their daily itineraries. While we visited during the low season in December, the five villages get absolutely rammed by tourists during the summer months. While the park only has 4,000 residents, they sees 2.4 million tourists per year. With only 3,000 beds available, the majority of these are day-trippers. By all reports, both the authorities and residents of the towns worry that the nature of the towns has changed dramatically to compensate for the huge tour groups, cruise ships and cashed up tourists. The effects of mass tourism are already being felt - many of the once terraced cultivations that line the hillsides around the villages have fallen into disrepair in recent years as their previous farmers left them for more secure jobs in tourism. However, as these terraces have become unused, the hillsides have become increasingly unstable and dangerous, a fact worsened by the horrific landslides that struck the region in 2011.

In addition to making for a less pleasant visitor experience, mass tourism damages the delicate ecosystem of a place where man-made hillside structures stay put only when properly maintained. As residents leave the land for secure jobs in tourism, the terraced cultivations that attracted UNESCO fall into disuse and become effectively dangerous.

While the towns of Cinque Terre are mobilising to combat the effects of tourism through staggered entry for tourists, increased maintenance on buildings and vineyards and better communication around when to visit, the problem seems still too large to manage. When we visited in mid December, each plaza of each village remained crowded with tour groups with audaciously loud tour leaders. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how horribly busy it would be in summer.

SHOULD YOU VISIT?

The question you have to ask yourself before visiting the Cinque Terre should be; ‘Why do I wanna go there?’ Am I going there just because it’s really popular? Am I going there because of instagram? If you’re the kind of tourist that goes to places for instagram, then by all means, you do that, but hang your head in shame along the way.

The villages of Cinque Terre are visually stunning, unique, and very, very special. However, there isn’t actually that much to do in any of them. As far as attractions, activities or things to engage yourself with, it’s pretty well only going to involve taking photographs and wandering around. If you’re lucky enough to visit when the walking trails between the towns are open (we weren’t), then you’ll be given the opportunity to hike, but other than that, there just isn’t that much to do.

While this should go without saying, the villages of Cinque Terre are expensive. Horrifically so. They have you trapped here, and each trattoria, bar or restaurant is going to slog you with huge fees for very, very ordinary food. We paid triple what we would expect for a very basic pizza/pasta combination in Manarola. The same is true for café’s, supermarkets, wine shops - everything here is exorbitant, and marketed towards cashed up tourists whom plan on spending their life savings in a short jaunt to Italy. The food isn’t amazing, the coffee is the same as everywhere else in Italy, and the beer is just as cold as any other village.

My vote: if you really, really want to visit the Cinque Terre, do it in winter. It’ll still be warm. It will be less crowded. Sure, fewer things will be open, but that’ll just force you to eat cheaply. The villages will be just as beautiful, the trails will be less busy, and the sunset no less glorious. If, however, you don’t feel like going after reading these words, rejoice! There are plenty of other fantastic locations in Italy that are still vaguely off the tourist trail? Ever heard of Mantova? Ever heard of Matera? Google them, buy a plane ticket. You won’t regret it

Questions? Queries? Concerns? Hit me up in the comments below!