6-Nights Italy: Genoa & the Cinque Terre

Manarola

The tiny town of Manarola is administratively part of Riomaggiore, but it is a small village on its own. The current town center dates back to the 12th century. A series of colorful houses, in the typical Ligurian style, crowd the main street (Via Discovolo) and the surrounding tiny alleys, known as caruggi.

A square on a terrace overlooks Manarola's picturesque, tiny harbor. The town is also home to a few surviving ruins from an ancient castle.

Manarola is also renowned for its surrounding vineyards, where the famous Cinque Terre white wine and the sweet Sciacchetra wine are produced.

Genoa, Italy

With its dizzying mix of old and new, of sophistication and squalor, Genoa (Genova) is as multilayered as the hills it clings to. It was and is a port city: an important maritime center for the Roman Empire, boyhood home of Christopher Columbus (whose restored house stands near a section of medieval wall), and one of the largest, wealthiest cities of Renaissance Europe. Capture glimpses of Genoa's former glory days in Genoa's portside Old Town, where treasure-filled palaces and fine marble churches stand next to laundry-draped tenements. Life within the old medieval walls doesn't seem to have changed since the days when Genovese ships set sail to launch raids on the Venetians, crusaders embarked for the Holy Land, and Garibaldi shipped out to invade Sicily in the 19th-century struggle to unify Italy. Modern Genoa, which stretches for miles along the coast and climbs hills, is a city of international business, peaceful parks, and breezy belvederes from which visitors can enjoy fine views of this colorful metropolis and the sea which defines its identity.