How to get to and move around the Cinque Terre

How to get to Cinque Terre villages and how to visit them?

The Cinque Terre lie within a vast National Park and are a Unesco World Heritage site. The villages are immersed in nature and there is only one road to get there, which gets narrower and narrower as you go along, full of hairpin bends. We strongly advise against using a car, for three reasons: the narrow and impassable road mentioned above, the scarcity of parking spaces, and the longer journey times.

So, which is the best way to move between these 5 villages?
There are 3 alternative means of transport that are more widely used and that we would recommend for getting around the Cinque Terre.

Everyone will choose the method that most suits for them!

By ferry boat… public or private!

The boat is a great way to visit the Cinque Terre, firstly because seeing these small villages perched on the rocks is a sight not to be missed. Secondly, the boat is a little less crowded than the trains. The only ‘flaw’ (for those who want to see everything in one day) is the slowness. To reach Riomaggiore, which is the first village from La Spezia, it takes more than an hour and to get to the last one, Monterosso, about an hour and a half. For the last 2 years there has been an excellent alternative to the public boat, and it is a boat of a private company that runs one-day tours with a guide in 3 villages of the Cinque Terre and brings you comfortably back to La Spezia.
See the link for more details

Cinque Terre by foot? You can!

On foot through the Cinque Terre? Nothing more beautiful, but you have to be fit!

The territory is made up of ups and downs and differences in height (from 200 to 500 metres to walk from one village to another). So, if the question now is how to hike in the Cinque Terre,  you have to read here an in-depth look at the paths for spending 2 days hike between all the villages, we suggest you the most beautiful paths.

Cinque Terre by car?…some tips

Driving to the Cinque Terre is not only inconvenient, as we said before, because of longer journey times and narrow, uncomfortable roads. It is also a parking problem.
All the car parks are usually in the upper part of the village, the restricted access zone for non-residents is always at the top, making it difficult to walk to the village, especially if you have suitcases. The only exceptions are Monterosso, which is larger and flatter, and Corniglia. In the latter case, in fact, the village of Corniglia itself is higher up, at parking level. Apart from this there are few spaces to put your car, if you need it you can read an in-depth study on parking in the Cinque Terre in this article.