Untold Italy · Friday, September 18, 2026
Cinque Terre is described as a 'vertical land' where villages cling to steep cliffs. Centuries ago, humans tamed this challenging terrain by creating terraces for agriculture, organizing the landscape in layers of woods, olive groves, and vineyards, fostering a symbiotic relationship with nature.
“The special thing of this land is that it is a vertical land. The mountains just cling and go down deeply, very steep on the sea. And so you have these villages, which nowadays are connected by train. So you can move from one to the other in 30 seconds by train. Two tunnels and you're there. But in the past, these villages were separated by high mountains.”
“A wild nature that has been tamed, can I say tamed by humans? Because you see all the terraces and the stone walls, which were made by men during the centuries to take something out of this very hard land. I would say it's like a mountainside on the sea.”
“So there is the woods on top, then there are the olive groves, and then closer to the sea, there are the vineyards. So there is a project in doing that, also according to altitude.”