Five pastel villages on a cliff coast
Cinque Terre
Tall houses in ochre, pink and yellow crowd tiny harbours below terraced vineyards on the Italian Riviera.
Why Cinque Terre is ligurian ochre
The Cinque Terre are five villages on a steep stretch of the Ligurian coast: Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. For centuries they could be reached only by sea or mule track. Their houses are tall and narrow, built shoulder to shoulder around small coves, and painted in the warm colours typical of Liguria: ochre, pink, red and yellow, with dark green shutters. The fishermen's legend about spotting home from the sea is told here too. Above the villages, hillsides are cut into terraces held by dry-stone walls, planted with vines and lemons. A railway and footpaths now link the villages. The area has been a World Heritage Site since 1997.
#E3A45ARose pink#E08C8CLemon yellow#F2D45AShutter green#3F6F4FLigurian Sea blue#2F6F9EValues are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Cinque Terre
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Cinque Terre" on Wikipedia. If you know Cinque Terre and we have it wrong, tell us.
More colour cities
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🇮🇹 Pastel harbour of the Bay of NaplesProcidaA small island where fishermen's houses in sun-faded pink, yellow and blue are stacked above the harbour.
🇮🇹 La Rossa, the red oneBolognaA city of red brick towers, terracotta roofs and miles of arcades in red, orange and ochre.
🇮🇹 The city that named a colourSienaA Tuscan hill city of warm brown brick, and the source of the earth pigment called sienna.
🇮🇳 City of saffron and lightVaranasiSaffron robes, marigold garlands and oil lamps colour the river steps of one of the oldest living cities.
🇮🇳 The Orange CityNagpurA city in central India named for a fruit: the loose-skinned Nagpur orange grown in the country around it.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Varanasi In: Marcin Białek, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Nagpur In: Gppande, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Burano It: Kasa Fue, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Procida It: Jamiethearcher at English Wikipedia, Public domain, source
- Bologna It: Ввласенко, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Siena It: Massimo Catarinella, CC BY-SA 3.0, source