5 ideal things to do in Vernazza

The short list, pulled out of the long essay. No opening hours, because they change and I would only get them wrong — just what is worth your morning, roughly when to turn up, and where I have wasted time so you don’t have to.

By Ščenza

Last checked September 12, 2025

Sentiero Azzurro from Vernazza to Corniglia
Trail 592, the high coastal pathStart before nine, or after four in high season
Three and a half kilometres of the best section, an hour and a half if you stop, and you need the park card to set foot on it. The path climbs out of Vernazza through terraces held up by dry-stone walls that people still repair by hand, drops into chestnut shade, and eventually hands you Corniglia — which sits on a headland a hundred metres above the sea. So you finish with the Lardarina: thirty-three flights, three hundred and eighty-three brick steps. There is a shuttle bus from the station. On my first visit I was too proud to look for it.
Castello Doria and the Belforte tower, Vernazza
On the rock above the harbour, ten minutes up from the piazzaLate afternoon, before the light goes flat
An eleventh-century castle and a round sixteenth-century watchtower on the rock above the harbour, both built for the single purpose of spotting raiders early enough to get everyone behind a door. The same sightline now gives you Vernazza's roof tiles from directly overhead and the coast running south in stages. It is a short, steep climb and a small ticket. Half the Dalmatian coast is built out of the same anxiety, which is a strange thing to feel homesick about.
Walk up to the Santuario di Nostra Signora di Reggio
Trail 508, above VernazzaAny morning; about 45 minutes up
Forty-five minutes of uphill through vineyard terraces and olive, ending at a small sanctuary with a colonnade, cypresses and almost no one. Every village down on the water has one of these up on the hill — the parish church for daily business, the sanctuary for the serious asking. The trail carries on to the Foce di Drignana if your legs are still interested. Nothing is sold anywhere on the route, a fact I confirmed the hard way with an empty bottle at the top.
Via dell'Amore, Riomaggiore to Manarola
The cliff-cut path between the two southern villagesTimed slots, booked ahead; fully reopened July 2024
Closed by landslide for twelve years and fully reopened in July 2024, now run on booked time slots with the park card. It is short — twenty minutes if you dawdle — and cut straight into the cliff face, which is the entire trick: sea below, rock above, no climbing required. People will tell you it is overrated because it is easy. It is easy because a lot of engineers spent a decade persuading a falling cliff to stop falling, and I think that deserves the walk.
Punta Mesco and the Sant'Antonio ruins
The headland between Monterosso and LevantoA clear day; roughly an hour up from Monterosso
About an hour up from Monterosso's old town through holm oak and strawberry trees to the broken walls of a thirteenth-century monastery on the point, and the best single view on this coast: all five villages strung out southward along the cliff at once. Carry on down to Levanto and take the train back — which is what I do now, having once walked it in both directions on a July afternoon for reasons I have never been able to reconstruct.

The long version

Cinque Terre on foot: the Ligurian coast at three kilometres an hour

The five villages of the Cinque Terre — Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, Riomaggiore — are now famous past the point of comfort. The trails between them, however, are largely empty after 10 a.m. when day-trippers cluster in the villages. Walk between them.

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