Cinque Terre, Italy

Cinque Terre, Italy. Travel Guide, Vacation, Tourism Holiday, Honeymoon. Set amid some of the most dramatic coastal scenery on the planet, these five ingeniously constructed fishing villages can bolster the most jaded of spirits. A Unesco World Heritage Site since 1997, Cinque Terre isn't the undiscovered Eden it once was but, frankly, who cares? Sinuous paths traverse seemingly impregnable cliffsides, while a 19th-century railway line cut through a series of coastal tunnels ferries the footsore from village to village. Thankfully cars were banned over a decade ago. Rooted in antiquity, Cinque Terre's five villages date from the early medieval period and while much of this fetching vernacular architecture remains, Cinque Terre's unique historical draw is the steeply terraced cliffs bisected by a complicated system of fields and gardens that have been hacked, chiselled, shaped and layered over the course of nearly two millennia. The extensive muretti (low stone walls) can be compared to the Great Wall of China in their grandeur and scope