A Rambling Writer Rerun: Italy, part 19: Cinque Terre’s Sentiero Azzurro to Vernazza
Your retro Virtual Italy Vacation continues our hike along the cliffside “Blue Path” to Vernazza, site of disastrous 2011 mudslides.
NOTE: For a virtual vacation and time-travel, join Thor and me in 2008. Italy! Starting with highlight photos posted here on Saturday, June 15, I’ll continue this rerun series every week, with occasional interruptions for other Geezer Adventures. Join us in Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice, and Milan. Buon viaggio!
Last week Thor and I had reached one of the clifftops along the winding cliffside trail, where we could look down at our destination — the fishing village of Vernazza.
A reminder from last week: The Sentiero Azzurro (Blue Path) along the rugged coast, linking the isolated five villages of the Cinque Terre, dates from the 12th to 13th centuries in the early Republic of Genoa. It was originally a mule track, the only link between the villages. Thor and I were lucky to hike sections of it on our 2008 trip, as a catastrophic storm and rains in 2011 severely damaged the route and two villages, and some sections of the trail remain closed today.
The agricultural terraces, cultivated with grapes and olive and lemon trees among other crops, were built up since Medieval times and also served to mitigate heavy rainfall runoff. Since around the 1950s, many farmers stopped tending the crops and terraces as they left for jobs in cities, and many of the terraces fell into neglect. These ones appeared to remain in good condition:
In addition to the danger of mudslides, the steep cliffs also pose a danger of rockfalls. DocThor will now don his geologist hat to explain:
“The villages of Cinque Terre are built on steeply dipping rocks. This means the layers are nearly vertical, like the leaves of a book resting on its spine. The orange arrow in the photo below points to a cliff face of vertical rock layers.”
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3 thoughts on “A Rambling Writer Rerun: Italy, part 19: Cinque Terre’s Sentiero Azzurro to Vernazza”
Those are terrific photos!
Thanks, Sherwood, for traveling along!
Practically every step was an eye opener on that trip. The old orchard terraces, the doors to shops and homes inches from the trail, the impossible buildings hanging on the rocks. It was amazing.