The Cinque Terre by Bike and Boat

Your Cinque Terre bike tour starts from La Spezia towards Biassa, a characteristic hilly village of very ancient origin, a viewpoint on the city and the Gulf of Poets. The main architectures of interest are the church of S. Martino which, despite repeated transformations, still retains its Romanesque style and the remains of the thirteenth-century Coderone castle, located on a hill outside the town and a Genoese outpost against Pisa. We then continue along the Via dei Santuari, a route of great historical and naturalistic interest, which connects all five sanctuaries linked to each of the villages of the Cinque Terre, a sort of Via Crucis, still traveled by the faithful during annual recurrences.

At the end of the Cinque Terre bike tour, in Monterosso al Mare, you embark for a tour of the Cinque Terre seen from the sea: a decidedly unique spectacle. The tour will end with a tour of the islands of the archipelago, located in the waters facing Porto Venere and which includes the three islands Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto. Tino, where there are interesting historical finds dating back to the XI century and the church dedicated to the cult of San Venerio, is a military area and access is allowed only on the occasion of the festivities in honor of the saint (13 September). You can see the ruins of the ancient abbey dedicated to the saint, built in the XI century. as a transformation of the chapel built in the seventh century, in the place where Venerio's body was found, who died in hermitage at Tino. The islet of Tinetto, devoid of vegetation, preserves ancient testimonies, in the form of ruins, of the presence of religious communities. Of the three islands of the archipelago, Palmaria is the most frequented and known, probably for the clarity of the waters that lap its coasts. The eastern side of the island gradually descends to the sea, covered by a rich Mediterranean vegetation; the western one, on the other hand, is defined by steep cliffs reaching 188 m in altitude. On the island we find the Forte Umberto I, today Fortress of the sea, built in the last century under the Savoy administration of Count Cavour and used as a prison until the 1950s. Enjoy the scents and colors of the brooms, the cysts with lively blooms, wild orchids, myrtles with a delicate aroma and other plants of the Mediterranean scrub; the Pozzale inlet, where there are some quarries of Portoro, the characteristic black marble with light streaks, active until a few years ago; the Grotta dei Colombi where human and animal remains dating back to the Neolithic were found.

The colored tower houses of Porto Venere, the church of San Pietro, with its unmistakable shape and the imposing limestone walls of the Muzzerone, will be the backdrop to our boat aperitif based on local products.