photo by gusto

Tucked into a bay on the east side of the jutting headland of Punta Mesco, MONTEROSSO is the chief village of the Cinque Terre. It’s also the largest of the five – population 1800 – and most developed, with the modern beach resort of Fegina occupying the shore just west of the old village. Beaches, both free and toll, are broad and picturesque; they’re separated from the narrow lanes of the old quarter by a hill, atop which is the seventeenth-century Convento dei Cappuccini. In the centre of the old village is the striped thirteenth-century church of San Giovanni Battista. Monterosso’s most recent claim to fame is as the hometown of the Nobel Prize-winning poet Eugenio Montale; his Ossi di Seppia (Cuttlefish Bones) is a collection of early poems about his youth in Monterosso.