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Cinque Terre transportation
Connecting the towns of the Cinque Terre by train, car, or on foot
tel. +39-0187-76-031 or 0187-762-600
www.parconazionale5terre.it
Viator day tours (from Florence):
• Cinque Terre Hiking day trip (13 hr.)
• Small Group bus tour (9.5 hr.)
Multi-day Cinque Terre trips:
• G Adventures: Cinque Terre Coastal Walk
• Intrepid Travel: Self-guided Cinque Terre walk
• Intrepid Travel: Self Guided Cinque Terre walk
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Riomaggiore
Manarola
Corniglia
Vernazza
Monterosso
The regional rail line of Le Cinque Terre spends most of its time in tunnels, popping out at the town stations every three minutes or so.Save for the bookend villages (Monterosso al Mare to the north and Riomaggiore to the south), none are easily accessible by car.
You can, of course, hike from one village to the next—that's kind of the point—but as for using public transportation:
Getting around the Cinque Terre by train
All, however, are linked by a regional rail line that spends most of its time tunneling from town to town through the sea cliffs (providing great peek-a-boo views).
The villages are quite close together; train rides between any two neighboring towns only take 3 minutes—figure on as much as 12 to get between non-neighboring towns, and up 20 minutes if you take the slow train all the way from one end to the other (though there's also an express train that skips the three intermediate villages and makes the trip in 7 minutes).
One-way train tickets between any two Cinque Terre towns cost €1.40 to €1.80, and are valid for six hours.
Getting around the Cinque Terre by boat
There is also now a batello ferry (tel. +39-0187-732-987; www.navigazionegolfodeipoeti.it), with sailings roughly once an hour between 9am and 12:30pm plus a few afternoon sailings between 2pm and 4pm.
The Cinque Terre ferry stops in Monterosso, Vernazza, and Riomaggiore.
Tickets range from €6 to €10.50, or get a full-day "5 Terre" ticket for €15.
Tips
- Planning your time: You can do the hike between the villages in five or six hours if you really hoof it, but most people take two days and make it more of a leisurely stroll, stopping for long lunches, pausing at cafes, taking a few hours to splash in the surf off a pebbly beach, and enjoying a nice long dinner before returning to a hotel or apartment with a view of the moonlight reflecting off the Mediterranean Sea.
- Take a tour from Florence: Our partners at Viator.com offer a well-regarded Cinque Terre hiking day trip out of Florence. It's a long (13 hours), but comprehensive tour, and leaves from the Florence train station at 7:30am. It includes bus transportation, rail travel between villages, hikes, a box breakfast, and lunch. Don't want to hike it? There's also a bus tour from Florence version that lets you walk the first, easy trail (Via dell'Amore), and also gives you time to wander four of the five villages (all save Monterosso; no great loss).
- Take a tour from Milan: Same as above, only leaving from Milano, the Cinque Terre Day Trip from Milan lasts 12 hours and stops first at Monterosso, from which you take a boat to Manarola, then hike the Via dell'Amore to Riomaggiore.
- Tourist offices in the Cinque Terre: The Cinque Terre park authority (tel. +39-0187-76-031 or 0187-762-600 or 0187-762-640; www.parconazionale5terre.it) has offices in Riomaggiore at Piazza Rio Finale 26 and at the train station in Manarola.
- Admission to the trails: They now have the temerity to charge you to hike the old goat paths between the villages. This ticket is called the Cinque Terre Card, and you can get one valid for 1 day (€5), 2 days (€8), 3 days (€10), or 7 days (€20). It includes admission to the trails, use of the (frankly superfluous) tiny buses in some towns, the occasional elevator, and entry to a few tiny museums (local history in Riomaggiore, wine in Manarola, and in Monterosso an aquarium and a museum of anchovy salting—no, seriously).
Virtual Cinque Terre
The official website for the park (best of local tourist offices) is www.parconazionale5terre.it, but other useful sites include:
• www.cinqueterre.com - Some good alternative lodging options, plus a blog; not all available in English.
• www.cinqueterrevirtuali.com - 360-degree photographs providing panoramic virtual tours tours of the towns, trails, restaurants, and many hotelsThere are also versions of the Cinque Terre Card that include unlimited train rides or unlimited ferry rides. Unless you're planning to take more than two train rides during your visit, don't bother. A standard train ticket between any of the towns costs just €1.60 to €1.80, while the train version of the card costs roughly €3.50 to €16.50 more per day (meaning you'd have to ride the rails at least three times a day or more to make it worthwhile). And, while nifty, you're unlikely to ride the less-frequent ferry more than once as a sort of mini-cruise. - How to get to the Cinque Terre: The Cinque Terre are well-served by a local regional rail line, but you will always have to change trains in La Spezia—and be prepared to do so; connection times are often pretty tight, so have your luggage in hand and be at the train door when you pull into the station. (Instead of La Spezia, some trains change at nearby Sarzana.)
Also, get in one of the first two or three cars of the train, since several of the stations in the Cinque Terre are very short (basically just an open stretch of tracks between one tunnel and the next) and back end of the train is sometimes left inside the tunnels.
I'm going to use Riomaggiore as our Cinque Terre base and give you train times to there; add 2–12 minutes to estimate the time it'll take to get to any of the other towns. Riomaggiore is pretty close to Pisa (75–95 min. total), Lucca (1:30–2 hr., with another change at Viareggio), Florence (2:15–3:33 hr., sometimes with another change at Pisa), and Rome (4:17–5:38 hr.). - Leave your luggage so you can hike the Cinque Terre: If you're just hitting the trail for a day and want to store your bags safely while you hike, there's a deposito bagagli (left luggage) at the train station-adjacent tourist office in Riomaggiore (tel. +39-0187-920-633). It's open 8am to 8pm; bags cost €0.50 per hour each.
Related pages
- Hiking the Cinque Terre
- Hotels in the Cinque Terre
- Cinque Terre towns: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, Monterosso al Mare
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This material was last updated March 2011. All information was accurate at the time.
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