Cinque Terre describes the Mediterranean coastline between Genoa and Tuscany, where the hills are carved into green terraces that descend toward the water. In the 13th century, the medieval citizens of the Levante Riviera transformed their rocky environment into arable land, creating nine miles of terraced landscape with over 1200 miles of stone drywall buttresses. (...)
Cinque Terre describes the Mediterranean coastline between Genoa and Tuscany, where the hills are carved into green terraces that descend toward the water. In the 13th century, the medieval citizens of the Levante Riviera transformed their rocky environment into arable land, creating nine miles of terraced landscape with over 1200 miles of stone drywall buttresses. For hundreds of years, Italians cultivated grapes and other crops in the hills above the five Ligurian towns of Monterosso, Riomaggiore, Vernazza, Coriglia, and Manarola. The region became famous for the quality of its wines as well as for the verdant beauty of its sculpted topography. In the 20th century many of the vineyards were abandoned when the local owners found themselves unable to compete with the high production and low costs of larger commercial wineries elsewhere in Europe. In 1973, Italy’s president bestowed Cinque Terre with a Document of Controlled Origin (D.O.C.), marking it as a valuable national landscape, but his gesture did not reverse the trend of desertion.
