Via dell’Amore in the Cinque Terre: how to access it

Finally, after 12 years from the landslide that injured four people on 19 July, the Way of Love will reopenthe path that connects Riomaggiore to Manarola in the National Park of Five landsin Liguria.

The path, a nine hundred meter route carved into the rock, had been closed since 2012. The works to make that stretch of mountain safe lasted about two and a half years and required the work of workers, mountaineers who also worked with helicopters and drones.

Therefore, on July 19th, the Via dell’Amore will be returned to the city with a local ceremony, while a week later, on the 26th, the national authorities will also be involved. Happy with this achievement is the mayor of Riomaggiore, Fabrizia Pecuniawho in an interview with Repubblica declared: «We fought so hard for this, but now you don’t become a tourist officebut a new model of sustainable management of visitors and property.”

For some years, in fact, the municipality of Riomaggiore and the Cinque Terre Parka UNESCO world heritage site, are trying to find a alternative model to overtourism. Every year, in fact, in this one fragile territory approximately three million visitors arrive and the new management of the Via dell’Amore will serve to test new systems and models. The previous administration would have liked to privatize this path, but from the end of July it will be possible to access it by reservation only and entry will be subject to a feeincluded in the Cinque Terre Card which, with the new entry, will become Cinque Terre Card plus. The additional fee paid by tourists (currently online is not yet available, the Cinque Terre Card starts from €7.50 per person for adults) will be used to support the maintenance costs continuous, ordinary and extraordinary, of the Way.

Monitoring of the path will in fact be increased and it is already expected that the networks containing the mountain will be systematically replaced. In a second moment, then, the Via dell’Amore will be transformed – according to the mayor’s words – into a open-air museum site, «so as to guarantee protection and special management, which we will entrust to a specialized person. The Municipality will guarantee public management, but, as happens for the most important Cultural heritage of the countrya specialized person is needed to enhance them, manage them and guarantee their most accurate protection”.

The new museum of the Via dell’Amore it will work in stages: in a year, in Manarola, the new museum of the twentieth century will be opened, dedicated to the Painters’ Festival which in the sixties brought some of the protagonists of the figurative arts of the twentieth century to pass through the village, which falls within the Municipality of Riomaggiore, starting from Renato Birolli. «We will invite contemporary artists to work here – said Pecunia – and also on part of the Via dell’Amore which, in the gallery section, also lends itself to being an exhibition space. The continuous comparison with the landscape and artistic production, both historical and contemporary, will be the backbone of the museum, like the exhibition we are about to inaugurate at the Castle of Riomaggiore: thanks to the augmented realityand on the viewers, the public will be able to compare the paths and views, in reality, of the Cinque Terre, with those painted by the great nineteenth-century Tuscan painter, Telemaco Signorini who was perhaps the first to fall in love with these places. The objective is to transform the visit to these places into a cultural experience.” For this we will still have to wait, but in the meantime we will finally be able to travel the Way of Love again.

Via dell’Amore, the characteristics of the route

The Way of Love is a easy route of 1.5 km, which can be covered with a walk of about 30 minutes. From Manarola station with a short staircase you continue between sections carved into the rock and along the coast on cliffs overlooking the sea. It is a walk to be tackled with peace of mind.

The Way of Love was built when, between 1926 and 1928during the construction of the doubling of the Genoa – La Spezia railway line, in this section the opportunity arose to connect the two inhabited centers of Manarola and Riomaggiore.