Set amid some of the most dramatic coastal scenery on the planet, these five ingeniously constructed fishing villages can bolster the most jaded of spirits. A Unesco World Heritage Site since 1997, Cinque Terre isn't the undiscovered Eden it once was but, frankly, who cares? Sinuous paths traverse seemingly impregnable cliff sides, while a 19th-century railway line cut through a series of coastal tunnels ferries the footsore from village to village. Thankfully cars were banned over a decade ago.
Back when Cinque Terre was but a collection of remote hardscrabble fishing villages, the Golfo dei Poeti (Gulf of Poets) was already drawing an it-crowd. Renamed for the English poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who escaped here in the 1820s, its natural beauty had inspired writers and artists as far back as Petrarch and Dante.
These are the top experiences and sights in the Cinque Terre and the Golfo dei Poeti, according to Lonely Planet.
