Guide | The Riviera di Levante
The coast in the shadow of five villages
This guide is about the eastern Ligurian coast, from Genova to the Tuscan border at the Magra, which is eighty-odd kilometers of the same steep, bright, vertical country that contains, somewhere in its middle, the five most visited villages in Italy. Most guides to this coast are guides to those five villages. This one is built the other way around.
We live forty minutes from the eastern end of it, in Versilia, we have slept in its towns and driven its full length in every season for five years, and the honest finding is this: the five famous villages are the least interesting thing about the coast, and the coast is better everywhere the name runs out.
In a nutshell aka TLDR
Anything is a better alternative than the five. Let’s keep it simple: don’t feed the SEO monster and call the Cinque Terre simply the five. Anything in this guide, and on the coast, is a better alternative than the five. Why? 100X less people for 95% the same experience. That is the goal. That is what this guide is.
Everything is a day-trip, so why won’t you just stay more? All of the destinations in this area can be done from a base as a day trip. But the Ligurian lifestyle, the slow embracement of dramatic hill-falling-to-the-sea towns, should be done with unlimited time. Or at least more than a couple of day trips. So book an apartment here and soak it in.
This gets physical. Money can buy convenience. Well, not in Liguria, it can’t. You still need to walk. A lot. Like, a lot. Uphill. In the summer (come off-season, please, much better option), scorching sun. So, plan this in when you come to this part of Italy. Probably not the best place to trolley up little kids, or walk with bad knees, or with any health issues. In terms of a base, pick from the rare flat towns.
Stones, stones, stones. This part of Italy has fewer sandy beaches and more rocky lagoons. Experiencing the sea is closer to a crab’s experience, which is soaking up sun on the rocks between waves, rather than sitting in the sand under an umbrella. But, in return, you’ll get the most turquoise blue waters, rivaling the Amalfi.
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Where to base yourself
The easy win: Lerici. We lived in this town for a couple of weeks and have returned many times ever since. It is convenient: flat, it has a promenade, a castle, a free beach, and ferries from the dock to the five. It also has some great history involving drunk English poets from the 19th century.
Lerici | An Old Friend on the Gulf of Poets
The kiosk under the castle is a small aluminum thing that should not, by any honest accounting, exist. It is open. It is on the harbor. It sells you mussels and oysters from a refrigerated case, pours you a glass of sparkling wine from a bottle kept in a bucket of ice, and the whole transaction takes as long as it takes to be hungry and costs about thre…
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The places not to miss
Genova. Everyone says don’t, not worth it. We say it is mandatory and it is one of the best, if not the best, port cities in Italy. Spend some time in the old quarter with narrow streets. Eat the local fried foods. It is also a perfect base alternative to Lerici on the other end of the Riviera. Genoa is a proper city, full of buzz, and we hear it also has an amazing nightlife.
The Tigullio. Rapallo, Portofino, Camogli, Santa Margherita, Sestri Levante, Chiavari. It’s a sort-of-consistent part of the Riviera that is connected culturally and geographically as well. Like Lerici, most of these towns are easy to walk around and rewarding to stay in.
Tigullio Roadtrip | Four Versions of the Same Liguria
There is a thing that happens after you have spent enough time driving the coast between La Spezia and Genova, and it is the thing every honest piece about this region eventually has to admit. The seaside towns are mostly the same. I do not mean this loosely. I mean that if you take the eighty or so kilometers of coastline between these two cities, igno…
Portovenere. We have a special connection to this port town. We’ve spent a few weeks here and have returned ever since. It is one of the slowest towns where you can just soak in the Ligurian spirit. No rush, no hurry, just drinking an espresso for half an hour.
The Cinque Terre. Yes, no guide is complete without the five, but we gave a different treat to this part. TLDR: come anytime but summer and focus on the lesser-known towns like Camogli. Visiting these towns during peak season is torture not just to the locals but also for yourself.
Cinque Terre | How To Do It Right
We almost missed the last train home because of a bottle of Vernaccia. This was in Corniglia, at a restaurant whose name I have honestly forgotten, on a terrace that sat on a ridge past the edge of the village, which is itself past the edge of reason, a hundred meters of cliff straight down to a sea that was doing its late-afternoon routine of turning f…
The Magra Delta loop. Montemarcallo, Tellaro, and Sarzana. The Magra river delta and the mountain-reserve behind Lerici. One of the best-kept secrets of this area, as it is always empty, almost no one goes there, yet it is a few minutes' drive from the five. If there is off-the-beaten-path, this is it.
Magra Delta Roadtrip | A Tagine, a Lighthouse, and a Dead Roman City
There are two ways to leave Versilia when you live here: the flat country, the umbrella beaches, and the smell of the marsh that this whole coast was built on top of begins to press you down. The first is north-east, into the mountains, the road that climbs up the inland valleys toward the Lunigiana and the Garfagnana, and
The valley behind. Everyone is focusing on the sea, but there is an entire valley behind the Ligurian coast that is still Liguria, and it is still amazing. Our piece on the Magra road trip covers some of it, and we will write a fully separate Guide on it. For now, we only covered Brugnato.
Ligurian food
Pesto. As you would expect, part 1. We tell you the story behind it and what the proper Genovese version is.
Focaccia. As you would expect, part 2. However, we tasted three different types with three different stories. Unveiled all in our piece.
Torta salata. Not 100% Ligurian as variations of this exist everywhere in Italy, but we experienced this first here.
Ceci. If a Tuscan reads this, they are probably already shouting that this is a Tuscan dish. It’s not, or not entirely. Chickpea flour with oil, burned to perfection.
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The final note
This guide is alive. I update it whenever a new piece on the Riviera di Levante goes up.
Everything in here is a place I have been to personally. I don’t write about restaurants I haven’t eaten at or towns I haven’t walked through. If a place is in this guide, it’s because I went, ate, learned something, and decided it was worth your time.
Guide last updated: 22 July 2026
