Go to CINQUE TERRE, Italy

The Cinque Terre is one of the greatest clean zones in Mediterranean Basin. It is located in Liguria, to the west of La Spezia. About 5 miles of rocky coast among two capes, hundreds of miles of beautiful paths, five small villages that located over the sea on the rocks. Cinque Terre didn`t suffer from massive expansion because of its history and position of local towns. Thanks to them the unique landscape was formed here with the stone walls located on a land, with the twisting coastal footpaths, with the most beautiful beaches between capes and with crystal transparent waters.

Strung along 18km of serrated cliffs between Levanto and La Spezia, the Cinque Terre is one of Italy’s treasures. These five higgledy-piggledy villages – Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore – are cut off by mountains choked with olive groves and dry-stone-walled vineyards, where farmers have eked out a living over the centuries.
The Cinque Terre became a Unesco World Heritage site in 1997, which includes a protected marine area, and became a national park (Parco Nazionale delle Cinque Terre) in 1999. Wine growers still use monorail mechanisms to ferry themselves up and the grapes down these unique lands, and in some cases have to harvest by boat. If the terraced hillsides are not worked, they will quite literally slide into the sea.
National park status has spared the area from a propagation of T-shirt shops and tacky souvenir stands, and saved it from environmental destruction. Cars and motorbikes are not allowed in the villages, which are connected by train (each about five minutes apart, mostly through tunnels). In the villages, electric buses scale the sheer streets. Park authorities close walking paths when numbers become too great, so it’s best to arrive in the cool and relative calm of the early morning.

The creation of the national park has also protected the Cinque Terre’s villagers’ well-being, providing them with free health screenings, natural medicine, subsidised child care and a free shopping service for the elderly. A co-op has been set up for farmers to profitably grow basil, garlic and pine nuts to produce local pesto. You can taste it in village restaurants, along with the area’s white wines, freshly caught fish and sweet local lemons.
Source: lonelyplanet.com, cinqueterre.a-turist.com