We were now heading to the next Cinque Terre’s town, called Porto Venere. Portovenere, located in the province of La Spezia, is a small seaside town in Liguria. In 1997, Portovenere and the villages of Cinque Terre were designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. As there is no train station in this village, we arrived to the village by boat.
Portovernere sits on a rocky peninsula on the Gulf of Poets, at the end of the Italian Riviera in region of Liguria. The place is popular with writers such as Byron, Shelley and DH Lawrence.
Slowly, our boat had entered the harbor.
Sons were totally fascinated when they saw this killing whale boat. Since then, they kept bugging us to take them for a ride in this boat, sigh.
Portovenere’s harbor is lined with brightly colored houses and narrow medieval streets lead up the hill to a castle.
Portovenere is definitely much bigger in size than her other sister towns.
The beach here is more like a beach, I mean a sandy beach that we used to see in Asia countries.
The promenade along the harbor is a pedestrian only zone, lined with tall colorful houses, seafood restaurants and bars.
Fishing boats, excursion boats and private boats dot the water.
One of the arched gateway lined along the main street. We climbed up Portovenere from here.
A water fountain was greeting us somewhere at the top. We quickly refilled our empty bottle and continued the walk. We followed the path that leads us to the Gothic church of St. Peter.
St. Peter chuch was consecrated in 1198, built over a pre-existing 5th century Palaeo-Christian church, which had rectangular plan and semicircular apse.
The new part, from the 13th century, is marked externally by white and black stripes, with a bell tower.
Around the church is a Romanesque loggetta with arches framing the coastline. The church is surrounded by fortifications. There are fantastic views of the church from the path leading up to the castle.
The castle uphill, as seen from St. Peter church. We didn’t go up there though, too exhausted already.
Instead, we followed the same path and walked down to a narrow street.
The main street in Portovenere, Via Capellini – also known as Carugio – cuts through the town. It starts from the arched gateway by the harbour and runs uphill to la Chiesa San Pietro.
The buildings on both sides of the narrow Via Capellini likely have not changed since medieval times and contain the town’s main shops and business.
The main street of the village is full of little souvenir shops and places where you can eat the typical ‘focaccia’.
The souvenir are good looking, but they are not exactly the one we were looking for. We felt quite disappointed for we didn’t get to buy what we wanted to for our new home. Anyway, this place is as charming as most of the European small town that we have visited.
The end of the street.
We have also visited another popular seaside town in Cinque Terra. Click on to read our story Swimming at Manarola
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