Castello di Riomaggiore

This guide to Castello di Riomaggiore in Cinque Terre opens on packed earth inside a fortress raised in twelve sixty by the Turcotti marquises, later finished by Genoa, which spent five centuries watching the sea for Saracen ships. It then turns to the early eighteen hundreds, when new French hygiene laws under Napoleon's administrators banned burial inside church walls across Liguria, leaving Riomaggiore without a place for its dead. Listen for how a fortress built against pirates ended up holding a different kind of ground, and for the original curtain wall still standing beneath your hand.