The primary trails of the Cinque Terre—those tracing the edge of the Tyrrhenian Sea between pastel ports—are overtrekked. The crush of daytime foot traffic turns centuries-old paths into congested thoroughfares. But 300 meters up into the terraced hillsides above each of the five towns, you’ll find blissfully empty paths that tell a different story of the region.
“These were never hiking trails. The paths were survival routes,” explains Angela Fenwick, owner of La Sosta di Ottone III, a 16th-century stone house turned boutique hotel above Levanto in the hamlet of Chiesanuova; Otto III, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, famously spent the night here some millennia ago on his way to being crowned in Rome.
