Corniglia, Cinque Terre -One Of My Favorite Villages

After reviewing all of my photos and videos from my visit to Corniglia, I feel like I didn't get enough pictures while I was there. Maybe it was because I was really enjoying myself and got carried away? Who knows!

Anyhow, Corniglia is the third of the five villages in Cinque Terre and is the smallest of them as well.  It sits above the ocean on a steep promontory and has some of the most beautiful coastal panoramas I've ever seen. It is the only village not accessible by boat due to its location. There are a few ways to get to Corniglia; you can hike there, catch a train, or drive there which I've been told is not recommended.

If you get there by train, which is how my family and I got there, you have two options to get up to the actual village. You can either hop on the bus for a short ride up the hill or walk up the Lardarina steps (Scalinata Lardarina) which has 382 steps. I didn't know about the bus on my first visit and we walked up the steps, which in the summer time can be really brutal. Although the steps seem never ending, take your time and enjoy the spectacular views of the Mediterranean and see Manarola from a far.

Of the 5 towns that make up Cinque Terre, I would say that for me, Corniglia is the most relaxed and charming village. The are lots of small streets to explore in this town and the main street is full of quaint shops.  The Largo Taragio is very nice and has a great restaurant called Caffe Matteo, they serve a great breakfast here.  Sitting above Largo Taragio is what at first I thought was a church, but is actually an oratory called the Oratory of the Disciplinati of Santa Caterina.  Its really small, quaint, but has a beautiful painting on the ceiling.

I, like a lot of people, thought that Corniglia didn't have a beach.  It actually has two beaches and on this visit I didn't actually go down to the beach. I just saw it from up above and the water looked so awesome that I returned the next day to go swimming there.  I'll have more on that in a future post, but for now all I can say is that the water was so clean and snorkeling there was awesome.

Due to time constraints we had to move on, but I would really like to go back and explore Corniglia some more.

Watch video of this day here: https://goo.gl/rdt5tX