Volastra

This guide to Volastra, the hilltop hamlet above Manarola in Cinque Terre, opens with an old man walking into the village asking for the church, claiming to be the last person alive who knew where its bells had been buried against a Saracen raid generations earlier. It follows the raid itself, the failed search, and the legend that the bells still ring somewhere underground on stormy nights. Along the way you will hear how the village got its name from the Latin for olive trees, how it may be the settlement that founded Manarola, and about the monorail trains, or trenini, that still haul grapes and olives up these impossibly steep terraces.