Corniglia
Clifftop village reached only on foot, ringed by steep vineyard terraces served by miniature cog railways.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Corniglia in Cinque Terre traces the centuries-old problem of moving grape harvests down slopes too steep for mules or tractors, when pickers carried baskets on their heads up the terraces by hand. It follows how a local cooperative, Cantina Sociale, engineered small cog trains gripping toothed rails bolted into the stone, running since 1979 to save the vineyards that produce the amber wine Sciacchetra. Those trenini still thread over sixteen kilometers of track stitched across the hillsides below the village.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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Clifftop overlook above terraced vineyards, reached by a switchback stairway of hundreds of steps.
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