Via dell'Amore

This guide to Via dell'Amore in Cinque Terre starts at Bar dell'Amore, once a stone warehouse used to store dynamite for a 1920s rail tunnel blasted between Riomaggiore and Manarola. It follows how the path outlived that job, reopening after World War Two as a spot where local boys and girls met in secret, and how a journalist who noticed hearts scratched into the rock gave it its name. A wedding in 1949 was timed to coincide with the trail's original reopening, the same railings now hung with couples' padlocks.