Docking weekly in the Ligurian port of La Spezia meant that we were in perfect proximity to Cinque Terre- Northern Italy’s famous coastal area, comprising of five stunning villages connected by a series of hiking paths. I love a good outdoor adventure, but hiking from Riomaggiore to Manarola via the Via Beccara turned out to be more of a challenge than I’d first imagined.
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All four of us were drenched in sweat with half a bottle of water left between us, and just over halfway up the steep incline, when Tomcy Thomas threw himself off of the path under the shade of a tree and told us we should go on without him. The sun was so outrageously hot that I was almost blind from a combination of razzle dazzle and sweat in my eyeballs, and the gradient was so very steep that it was actually impossible to tell where the top truly was. Far below us, the white sails of a boat were a twinkle of light on the azure sea; it was so very far in the distance that if I held up my hand, the boat’s size was equal to a quarter of my little fingernail. Tomcy’s brows were furrowed tightly together with worry and if we asked him a question his only way of responding was to shake his head and stare into the distance clutching his chest.
It was precisely at this point that I thought to myself: Tomcy Thomas may be about to die. On a mountain in Cinque Terre. And if he did, it would be all my fault.
From La Spezia to Riomaggiore
My three fellow hikers were with me purely by accident; in fact, my original plan had been to hike the Via Beccara from Riomaggiore to Manarola all by myself. In hindsight, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t. I’d bumped into them on the way to the train station in La Spezia- Tomcy Thomas, Slaven and Matjia- and we ended up following the flow of cruise passengers all the way through the town to the train platform, which was so saturated with people that it’s a wonder how nobody fell onto the tracks. As we validated the tickets in the little hole-punch-style machine, I explained my plan for the day, and said they were more than welcome to join me, as long as they really were up for a hike. “It doesn’t look like it’s that far from Riomaggiore to Manarola, but I can’t tell how hilly it is; so it might be a bit deceiving.”
They were up for it. Tomcy got out his 360º camera on a stick and held it above the crowd to take in the station, planning to document the whole day. What a time to be alive.
We boarded the train along with the hordes, and sandwiched ourselves in. Luckily, Riomaggiore is the first stop on the journey, and within a mere seven minutes we’d arrived at the station, bursting out onto the platform and back into the heat of the day.
An introduction to Cinque Terre
Once upon a time, many many years ago, Cinque Terre was nothing but a series of exceedingly pretty fishing villages, set into the steep seaside cliffs of northern Italy. The precarious position of each of the villages make them very difficult to access with a car, which left them feeling rather cut off from the rest of Italy; and when railways arrived on the scene, a lot of the population began to migrate to bigger cities with better job opportunities.
Until tourism arrived, that is. Since the 1970s, visitors to Cinque Terre steadily increased, until the invention of instagram- when it basically boomed. During the height of summer these villages are swamped with people arriving by train to take identical photographs of themselves in the same insta-worthy spots and sample la dolce vita. I get it, pals. This is a really stunning place, and it makes sense that the world and his wife would want to come and see it with their own eyes.
But I am not much of a crowd person, and the best way to dodge the crowds is often to focus on the journey rather than the destination. I decided that, rather than tick off each village as quickly as possible, I’d start by simply hiking between two of them. How hard could it be?
Hiking from Riomaggiore to Manarola: the options
There are a few choices when it comes to hiking from Riomaggiore to Manarola. (Disregarding, of course, the train, which takes mere minutes.)
Option one: Via dell’Amore
The most obvious choice for most visitors wanting to walk between the two villages, is to take the Via dell’Amore, which is a smooth pathway following the bottom of the cliffs between Riomaggiore and Manarola. You can only access the path from Riomaggiore- traffic is one way, basically- and there’s also a charge of €12.50 per person to enter the trail. (2025)
The Via dell’Amore is considered a very easy hiking route thanks to its well-maintained surface which is almost completely flat; in fact, it normally takes around twenty minutes to complete. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, you might say.
Buy tickets to enter the Via dell’Amore.
Option two: Via Beccara (Route 531)
You’ll hear two names for this hiking path, but whether you call it the Via Beccara to Route 531, the trail’s difficulty level remains the same. The Via Beccara a challenging hike, consisting almost completely of hundreds of roughly-constructed steps into the steep hillside. Until the Via dell’Amore was constructed, this was the only path between Riomaggiore and Manarola; so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if that meant that historically the two villages never saw each other.
It might look short on a map- the trail only covers about a mile- but there is a 202m difference in elevation from the lowest to the highest points. This is a true workout for your thighs, pals.
And aside from the severe differences in difficulty between the two hiking paths, the other major difference between the two routes is that the Via Beccara doesn’t require a Cinque Terre hiking pass, or a ticket, to enter.
Maybe it’s simply because I’m a cheapskate, but I’d like to think it’s more because I like a challenge: I chose Via Beccarra for my hike on that sweaty, sweaty day.
See the exact route of the Via Beccara.
Leaving Riomaggiore
There’s no point in even attempting to play down the beauty of this place: Riomaggiore is completely and utterly charming. The layers of coral pink, pastel yellow and earthy red and terracotta coloured houses are stunning against the steep green slopes that cradle it, and on that August day the sea and the sky were brilliant shades of blue. We skipped the crowds of the lower part of the village, however, and headed immediately upwards, towards the pretty church of San Giovanni Battista that overlooks it all. In the shade, a cat lolloped lazily and a few children passed a ball from one to the other.
We stopped to take a few pictures through the salmon-pink bougainvillaea, and then kept on heading upwards to the round towers of the 13th century Castello di Riomaggiore. Considering the hugely overcrowded train, there was barely another soul to be seen up above the village; like many a tourist hotspot, all you have to do is take a detour down a side street and you’ll often find peace and quiet almost immediately.
I checked the map on my phone and pointed in the direction of the imposing hillside. “I’m pretty sure the path is over there. But we should probably buy some more water first.”
Matija waved away my worries about hydration with one swat of a hand. “Don’t worry, we will get water in Manarola!”
I have come to realise, pals, that when I have researched something fairly thoroughly and voice my concerns- in this case that we should definitely buy some water- I should really stick to my guns. If somebody tells me not to worry, or that they know better, and I know for a fact that they do not, I’d actually save us all a lot of bother by not backing down. And whilst I’m not saying this is something that all men do, my personal experience, unfortunately, is that it’s something that only men have done to me.
So away we went, with one bottle of water between the four of us, towards the notoriously difficult Via Beccara from Riomaggiore to Manarola in the height of the midday sun. In late August. Gosh.
The Via Beccara in all its glory
We stood at the bottom of the hillside- a hillside which looked almost vertical- marvelling at the fact that the Via Beccara truly was, apparently, a flight of steps. After a brief moment to think about it, and a double check of the map to confirm that Manarola really was only just the other side of the hill, we were off. Step by individual step.
And at first, everything was fine. Not just fine, but stunningly beautiful. Every now and then I stopped to look back at Riomaggiore in the August haze, feeling luckier and luckier that I got to explore somewhere this beautiful. Even if I was completely soaked with sweat, it was worth it. And the bonus of the Via Beccara is that it’s really quite impossible to get lost: there’s only one set of steps to follow, which turns into a pathway at the top, which turns back into another flight of stairs on the other side.
Into almost every hillside we could see, there were terraces carved so that grapes and olives could be grown and harvested; I’d seen an almost identical technique in the hills of Sa Pa in Vietnam. It’s pretty mind-blowing how people found the same methods of farming thousands of miles apart from each other, I thought to myself.
Tomcy’s near death experience
I was jolted out of these thoughts by Tomcy Thomas exclaiming that his heart was about to give up. Beads of sweat were rolling down his face. (Beads of sweat were rolling down all of our faces, but they were extra dramatic ones for Tomcy.) “My heart cannot cope with this heat.”
Matija looked worried, but tried to jolly up the situation. “Man, you’re from India! You are used to heat! You’re a young guy!”
“Yes. But we do not climb mountains in the middle of the day. I’m not used to this, man.”
This seemed very wise. It is always wise to not climb mountains in the middle of the day, particularly if it’s over 30º C and there’s very minimal shade available. The problem is that when you work on a cruise ship, you don’t get to pick and choose your free time. If the middle of the day’s all you’ve got, that’s what you take.
Tomcy threw himself underneath a tree at the side of the staircase, and we all sat down, panting. The water in the communal bottle was almost at boiling point, but I offered it to him anyway and he took a few tentative sips. We were so high up that there was no point in turning back, although I was genuinely concerned that Tomcy might collapse from heat exhaustion and tumble all the way back down the hillside.
“How will my parents visit my grave if I am buried in this mountain in Italy?”
I felt terrible. What was I thinking, dragging these poor unsuspecting souls up a mountain with me!? Tomcy hadn’t got his 360º camera out once since we started heading upwards; he had bigger fish to fry, in the form of simply staying alive on the Via Beccara.
We soldiered on, heading upwards in bitesize chunks and letting Tomcy rest again whenever he needed it. Closer to the top, shady spots seemed to be more frequent, although not without other dangers. Matija looked down at Tomcy lying in the long grass; “Just be careful. In Croatia this is the kind of place for scorpions and snakes to hide.” Tomcy’s brows furrowed even deeper with concern.
Downhill to Manarola
What goes up, must come down, and the little village of Manarola- like Riomaggiore- is nestled inside the cosy cradle of a valley in the Cinque Terre national park. Once we’d made it over the crest of the hill, which was truly more of a mountain if you ask me, it was much smoother sailing. For starters, downhill is far less tiring than up, but secondly there was far more shade available on this stretch of the Via Baccara. Praise the lord.
I felt much happier knowing that I was now trailing slightly behind the other three, who were practically running down the steps towards the rooftops of Manarola beneath us. I clicked away with my camera, confident that the end was in sight. Literally. Until I heard a terrifying shout from the path somewhere ahead of me.
The shouts continued, and I couldn’t make out what they were saying until I got closer. “Water! Water!”
Slaven was at the front of the group with his empty bottle outstretched underneath a pipe above the path, from which crystal clear, cool water flowed steadily outwards. Tomcy caught up and stood directly underneath its flow, looking as if he might cry tears of joy at any second. It was a huge relief to realise that none of us, especially not Tomcy Thomas, would be dying on a mountain in Italy, that’s for sure.
Medusas in the water
It felt like the journey downhill to Manarola took only a quarter of the time it had taken for us to follow the Via Beccara upwards, and it was a strange feeling to suddenly be out of the cicadas and stillness of the hills, propelled into the narrow lanes of Manarola and surrounded again with people on all sides. Pushing through the throngs of bodies in the heat was quite the sensory overload, but we made it to a little shop selling fried fish and I swiftly ordered a paper cornetto filled with anchovies. The fresh salty fish, with a zing of lemon juice squeezed across the batter, was a glorious reward for one of the sweatiest hikes of my life, but there is, of course, an even better way to cool down after such an ordeal.
And that, folks, is to jump into the sea as quickly as humanly possible.
We set up on the concrete path where boats roll into the water, and I climbed down the rungs of a metal ladder off of the sea wall, launching myself into the calm, cool sea. What a relief for the muscles, I’m telling you. There were plenty of other swimmers in the water, bobbing around next to the rugged cliffs of the village, or flinging themselves off of rocks in great big splashes. What a time to be alive.
Until some more alarming shouts. “Medusa!! Medusa!!” Three boys were stood on the wall next to the water, eyes wide open in alarm and pointing wildly at a spot in the sea. “Medusa!”
Knowing that the Croatian word for jellyfish is ‘medusa,’ I hedged my bets on that also being the Italian translation. And in any case, I was not up for sticking around to confirm my linguistic suspicions. I swam as hard as I could back to the ladder, attempting to stay calm, and heaved myself out and back into the sun. There was no way I was about to let myself be stung by a jellyfish immediately after not dying on the Via Beccara.
Am I glad we hiked the Via Beccara?
Am I glad we hiked the Via Beccara? Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. I’m so so glad we hiked this route instead of taking the Via dell’Amore. I wanted a hiking route which had fewer people on the path, and was more of a challenge than a stroll. This was exactly that; and although I’m a bit more of an experienced hiker, even Tomcy said he was proud of himself for making it all the way over the mountain to Manarola. (Also, for not dying.)
This was also potentially one of the most memorable days of that particular five months that I spent sailing around the Mediterranean. The sense of achievement (and exhaustion) we had whilst drinking our post-swim freshly squeezed orange juice in a little seafront bar in Manarola, was downright brilliant.
Hiking the Via Beccara? Completed it, mate.
Tips for hiking the Via Beccara
- Don’t do what we did. Take plenty of water, and if you can avoid it, don’t hike the Via Beccara in the middle of the day.
- It should take around an hour to hike the Via Beccara, although that’s very dependent on your level of fitness. It took us much longer.
- You should probably let someone know that you’re going to do this hike beforehand, just in case; although we did see several other hikers that day.
More from Italy:
Burano Island and Its Rainbow Houses
Docking in Civitavecchia, Rome’s port city