Reader, NB that I had this experience in 2010. Overtourism was creeping in on Italy’s Cinque Terre but it had not yet suffered the destruction of both weather and wear from too many feet trodding its paths. I would love to go back and see what it’s like there today.
A Hidden Gem in Riomaggiore
The most popular – and obvious – hike in the Cinque Terre is the Sentiero Azzurro, or Blue Trail, that stretches 12km along the coast. Hiking the Blue Trail is one of the most popular things to do in Cinque Terre and thus is full of tourists, but it’s understandable – the views and the trails are breathtakingly beautiful at every step and stage of the hike. What some of the many tourists who go there don’t realize, or bother to find out, is that there are many other hiking trails up behind the villages, and getting off the beaten path in the Cinque Terre is easy and rewarding.
Getting to Santuario della Madonna di Montenero
I read about the Santuario della Madonna di Montenero, a church at the top of one of these trails behind Riomaggiore (the southernmost town of the “five lands”), 1,100 feet above sea level with views of the entire coastline. Legend has it that in the 8th century an icon of the Virgin Mary was hidden on the grounds where the church now stands to protect it from invaders. When the icon was found years later and removed, a spring magically appeared in the same spot.
I took a bus to the bottom of the hill, where a short 20 minute hike led me through a quiet vineyard that smelled like heaven and where butterflies flitted around me; for a few moments I felt like a princess in a Disney movie.
The church itself is fairly modest in size and design, with a pretty pink and yellow bell tower on top. The views of the coast and the sea looking toward Riomaggiore and the rest of the Cinque Terre were pretty mindblowing.
Even harder to believe is the fact that this is still an active church, and when I arrived there was a service going on; the speakers outside the church allowed those of us standing on the grounds to hear the music and the priest speaking and chanting in Latin. Even for someone who doesn’t attend church regularly, and considers themselves mostly agnostic (that would be me), it made for a pretty holy and surreal, beautiful experience. I actually got a couple of minutes on video in which you can see and hear just what I was experiencing:
The hike back to Riomaggiore took me on a much woodsier path, which was almost completely empty and quiet. There were small holy shrines tucked into random corners of the mountainside on the way down, as well as some kind of old pulley system that must have been used to send supplies up and down before modern transportation made things a bit easier.