The 7 best towns you can reach by train in the province of La Spezia

1. Framura

Best for a swim. The comune's beach holds a Blue Flag.

59 min from Genoa · homes €2,650 to €3,900 a m² in the center · 553 people

Why visit Framura

Framura is not one village but five: Anzo on the water, Setta and Ravecca on the slope, Costa above them, and Castagnola at roughly 300 meters with views back down to the coast. The commune spans from the rocky shoreline to 845 meters inland on the ridge that separates the Cinque Terre coast from the Vara valley.

Byzantine settlers built the original circular watchtowers here against Saracen raids, three of them still standing on the coast and inland. The hamlets remained agricultural until the Genova-La Spezia railway tunneled through in the late nineteenth century, opening the commune to summer visitors.

The seafront below Anzo, reached by a converted railway tunnel turned cycle path, carries the Bandiera Blu, and the same path runs north toward Bonassola and Levanto. Framura is the quiet outlier on this coast: the closest Borghi più belli village to Monterosso al Mare without being in the Cinque Terre national park.

The catch: It has lost 15% of its people since 2015.

What to see in Framura

• Torri bizantine. Three surviving Byzantine watchtowers on the coast and ridge, built to defend the village from Saracen incursions.
• Castagnola. Highest of the five hamlets at around 300 meters, with views over the lower frazioni and the Riviera di Levante.
• Anzo waterfront. Coastal hamlet at sea level with the Bandiera Blu beach access, the lowest of Framura's five settlements.

How to get to Framura

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 59 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Framura

2. Deiva Marina

Best for a small town. 1,291 people live here.

50 min from Genoa · homes €2,150 to €3,900 a m² in the center · 1,291 people

Why visit Deiva Marina

The commune sits at the bottom of a valley running from Monte San Nicolao, eight hundred meters up, down to the Ligurian Sea, fifty kilometers east of Genoa. The territory is first documented in a Carolingian imperial diploma of 774, but for most of its history the settlement stayed inland: the coastal plain flooded, and Barbary raids made the shore too exposed to live on.

The villages up the slope were the town. The seafront had no fixed population until the railway reached it, and the seafront that grew up afterward, around the station and a hotel called Albergo Savoia, is a nineteenth-century addition to a place whose real age lies up the hill.

The round watchtower near the sea was partly demolished by a flash flood in 1852, a reminder that the coast it guarded was never entirely tame even after settlement arrived. What the geography adds up to is a town in two pieces on two timelines: an old, defended, inland Deiva that predates the sea by centuries, and a young shoreline that only exists because a railway made the coast safe to build on.

What to see in Deiva Marina

• Torre Saracena. The square tower stands beside the church, its stone weathered, a lookout post scaled to a coastline once undefended by anything larger.
• Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Abate. Still the parish church, standing in what was the original inland centro storico before the seafront existed, dedicated to the Egyptian hermit.
• Spiaggia di Deiva Marina. Shallow sand and shingle running below the railway station, wide enough that the crowds it draws spread rather than crush.

How to get to Deiva Marina

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 50 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Deiva Marina

3. Levanto

Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.

1 h 12 min from Genoa · homes €3,100 to €4,400 a m² in the center · 5,050 people

Why visit Levanto

Levanto sits at sea level on the Ligurian coast, twenty kilometers northwest of La Spezia, on the western edge of the Cinque Terre National Park, which takes in part of its territory. The Cinque Terre Express train stops here every half hour on its way to the five villages, but Levanto has the things they do not: a long sand-and-gravel beach with Bandiera Blu status, a flat centro storico, and a surf break that local guides classify as one of the few big-wave spots in Italy.

The Chiesa di Sant'Andrea, built in 1222, fronts the old town with horizontal bands of white marble and dark green serpentine and a large rose window. Casa Restani, on Via Grillo, is a surviving medieval merchant house with the ground floor where goods from the harbor were stored.

Levanto holds Cittaslow, Bandiera Blu, Parco Nazionale, and Città dell'Olio at once.

What to see in Levanto

• Chiesa di Sant'Andrea. Parish church built in 1222 in Ligurian Gothic style, with horizontal bands of white marble and green serpentine and a large rose window over the main door.
• Castello di Levanto. Thirteenth-century defensive castle on the hillside, still intact but privately owned and closed to the public.
• Loggia Comunale. Thirteenth-century arcaded loggia on the main piazza, awarded a UNESCO title in 2007 as a monument of culture and peace.

How to get to Levanto

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 1 h 12 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Levanto

4. Vernazza

Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.

1 h 41 min from Genoa · homes €3,800 to €5,600 a m² in the center · 697 people

Written about. No. 56. Read the letter →

Why visit Vernazza

Vernazza sits at sea level, the middle of the five villages along this stretch of coast and the only one with a natural harbor. The houses stack vertically up the gorge of the Vernazzola torrent, painted in faded ochres and pinks, with the square at the harbor marking the seaward end of Via Roma and the social center of the village.

On 25 October 2011, a freak rainstorm dropped 22 inches of water in four hours. The torrent burst its culvert and buried the main street under four meters of mud and debris.

Three people died. The village was closed for months, and most of the houses on Via Roma had to be excavated to the second story before it reopened.

The harbor, the fortified height above it, and the terraced slopes behind form a single working shape: a landing place guarded from above and fed from the terraces, all of it packed into a gorge narrow enough that a few hours of rain could bury the street from end to end.

The catch: It has lost 19% of its people since 2015.

What to see in Vernazza

• Castello Doria. The keep and the Belforte tower stand over the harbor, built by the Doria as a defense against Saracen raids.
• Chiesa di Santa Margherita d'Antiochia. Fourteenth-century church on a rock platform at the edge of the harbor, documented from 1318, the gothic anchor of the village.
• Porto di Vernazza. The only natural harbor in the Cinque Terre, with a small pebble beach and a ferry pier serving the four other villages and Portovenere.

How to get to Vernazza

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 1 h 41 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Vernazza

5. Riomaggiore

Best for walks in a national park. Part of the comune lies in a national park.

1 h 28 min from Pisa · homes €3,400 to €5,000 a m² in the center · 1,287 people

Written about. No. 55. Read the letter →

Why visit Riomaggiore

The village sits at the eastern end of the coastal line running out of La Spezia, first among the five reached along that route. It is documented from 1251, when the Carpena district swore allegiance to Genoa.

The castle went up first, begun in 1260 against pirate raids; the church followed in 1340 under Bishop Antonio Fieschi, its neo-Gothic front a much later addition from 1870, with a Maragliano crucifix still inside. The terraces above the rooftops were cut into the slope in the Middle Ages and are still worked by hand, producing the Cinque Terre DOC whites and the sweet Sciacchetrà.

The built village is compact: castle and church above, the narrow harbor below at the water's edge, boats hauled onto the slipway between the breakwaters. Pixar set Luca here in 2021, lightly disguised as Portorosso.

Roughly 2.5 million annual visitors now reach a commune of 1,287 residents, a ratio that says as much about the place as any single monument: a fishing settlement of one street and one slipway, built to hold far fewer people than now pass through it, sized against a public many times its own population.

The catch: It has lost 19% of its people since 2015.

What to see in Riomaggiore

• Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Built in 1340 under Bishop Antonio Fieschi, rebuilt with a neo-Gothic façade in 1870, holds a wooden crucifix by Anton Maria Maragliano.
• Castello di Riomaggiore. Begun in 1260 by the Marchesi Turcotti against pirate raids, completed by Genoa two centuries later, twin cylindrical towers above the village.
• Via dell'Amore. The path clings to the cliff face between two villages, the sea directly below and the rock wall pressing close on the other side.

How to get to Riomaggiore

It has its own railway station. Pisa is about 1 h 28 min away by road. The full route from Pisa.

Everything we know about Riomaggiore

6. Monterosso al Mare

Best for a long lunch. Food guides list three tables here.

1 h 18 min from Genoa · homes €3,800 to €5,600 a m² in the center · 1,324 people

Written about. No. 54. Read the letter →

Why visit Monterosso al Mare

The village splits into two halves on either side of a headland: the older centro storico and, on the other side, the Fegina seafront where the railway runs behind the sand. The Capuchin convent looks out over both sides from that same headland, the hinge on which the whole layout turns.

Above the rooftops, at 464 meters, a hilltop sanctuary has stood on the same ground, by tradition, since 740 and is called the oldest Marian site in Liguria. The parish church down in the old town, banded in black and white marble, was built centuries later, so the two put a long stretch of the coast's religious history on display within sight of each other.

Montale's villa stood in Fegina, and the rocks and cliffs he carried into Ossi di seppia are the same ones visible from either half of the village. The geography here is the story: a headland dividing old from new, and a hillside holding the older of the two by several centuries.

The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,600 a m².

What to see in Monterosso al Mare

• Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Parish church built 1282-1307 with a black-and-white-banded marble façade and a fresco of the baptism of Christ over the main portal.
• Santuario di Nostra Signora di Soviore. Hilltop sanctuary at 464 meters above the village, first documented in 1244 and dated by tradition to 740, called the oldest Marian site in Liguria.
• Convento dei Cappuccini. Seventeenth-century Capuchin convent on the San Cristoforo headland, separating the centro storico from Fegina.

How to get to Monterosso al Mare

It has its own railway station. Genoa is about 1 h 18 min away by road. The full route from Genoa.

Everything we know about Monterosso al Mare

7. Sarzana

Best for a stage of a long walk. The Via Francigena passes through.

54 min from Pisa · homes €1,500 to €2,250 a m² in the center · 21,768 people

Written about. No. 20. Read the letter →

Why visit Sarzana

Sarzana sits on the Magra plain at the Liguria-Tuscany border, eighty kilometers from Parma and thirteen from the sea at Portovenere. The town inherited the episcopal seat of Luni in 1204, when Pope Innocent III moved it here away from the malarial plain, and the cathedral built for that new seat still anchors the centro storico.

The walled center keeps its grid plan, with Via Mazzini and the cathedral square running through it and the Palazzo Roderio still doing duty as the town hall. Above the town, on a ridge, a second fortress with a triangular plan looks down on the plain and the older one below.

A future pope was born here in 1397. Between the hill fortress from the fourteenth century, the Renaissance rebuilding of the lower cittadella, and a cathedral that changed hands with a diocese, the town's layout reads as a record of who controlled the Magra plain and when.

What to see in Sarzana

• Fortezza Firmafede. The fortress replaced a medieval cittadella on the same ground. Giuliano da Sangallo's plan survives largely intact, with the bulk and angles of the walls still readable from the approach into town.
• Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. Late Gothic Tuscan cathedral, elevated to minor basilica in 1947. A cardinal born in the town, half-brother to a native-born pope, left his mark on the later additions.
• Croce di Mastro Guglielmo. The cross hangs inside the cathedral it has occupied since the seat moved here. Signed by its maker, it is the object the town's Romanesque reputation rests on.

How to get to Sarzana

It has its own railway station. Pisa is about 54 min away by road. The full route from Pisa.

Everything we know about Sarzana