The Most Beautiful Places in Liguria
8 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Liguria are Vernazza, Manarola and Portofino. The list covers 8 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Liguria is a thin arc of land squeezed between the Apennines and the sea, so steep that for centuries its villages were easier to reach by boat than by road. Generations of farmers cut the slopes into narrow terraces held by drystone walls, and the Republic of Genoa turned the coast into one of the great maritime powers of the Mediterranean. The result is a region where colour, rock and water are compressed into very little space.
In the Cinque Terre, Vernazza gathers its tall houses around a tiny harbour watched over by a medieval tower, and Manarola stacks pastel facades on a dark rock spur above the sea, with terraced vineyards behind. Further east, at Portovenere, the striped Gothic Church of St. Peter stands alone on a promontory at the mouth of the Gulf of La Spezia. On the Portofino promontory, Portofino itself curves around a small horseshoe harbour, and the Abbey of San Fruttuoso hides in a cove reachable only on foot or by sea, with the bronze Christ of the Abyss standing on the seabed of its bay.
Genoa adds the grandeur of a merchant republic. Via Garibaldi, laid out in the sixteenth century, is lined with the palaces of its leading families, among them Palazzo Rosso and Palazzo Bianco, and the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno fills a hillside with realist marble sculpture. Fishing villages, sanctuaries and palaces make up a coast of extraordinary density.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vernazza | Most beautiful village | |
| 2 | Manarola | Most beautiful village | |
| 3 | Portofino | Most beautiful village | |
| 4 | Via Garibaldi, Genoa | Pedestrian street | |
| 5 | Church of St. Peter | Church building | |
| 6 | San Fruttuoso Abbey | Abbey | |
| 7 | Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno | Cemetery | |
| 8 | Christ of the Abyss | Sculpture |
01 Vernazza
Italy44.135° N 9.684° E
- one of the most beautiful villages
Bruno Rijsman · CC BY-SA 2.0 Vernazza is the fourth of the five villages of the Cinque Terre, counting from the south, and for many the most perfectly composed.
Did you know? In 1209 nearly ninety heads of Vernazza's leading families swore allegiance to the Republic of Genoa.
02 Manarola
Italy44.106° N 9.727° E
Image by tristanmimet from Pixabay Manarola is the smallest drama of the Cinque Terre told at full volume. Tall, narrow houses painted in reds, yellows and pinks are packed onto a spur of dark rock that ends abruptly above the Ligurian Sea, with a tiny harbour cut into the stone at its foot.
Did you know? Manarola grew from people moving down to the sea from the Val di Vara and the Roman-era settlement of Volastra once raids by Muslim pirates had declined.
03 Portofino
Italy · 25 km from Genoa44.304° N 9.207° E
Quintin Soloviev · CC BY 4.0 Portofino is a fishing village that became a byword for the Riviera without losing its shape. A tight horseshoe of tall, narrow houses painted ochre, rose, saffron and terracotta wraps around a small natural harbour at the tip of the Portofino promontory, with wooded slopes rising steeply behind.
Did you know? Elizabeth von Arnim's 1922 novel The Enchanted April grew out of her stay at Castello Brown and is credited with making Portofino fashionable.
04 Via Garibaldi, Genoa
Via Giuseppe Garibaldi
Italy · 0.3 km from Genoa44.411° N 8.933° E
Alex2015Genova · CC BY-SA 4.0 5 metres wide, lined on both sides with the town houses of the Genoese aristocracy, each trying to outdo its neighbour in marble, stucco and painted ceilings.
Did you know? Over the centuries the street was called Strada Maggiore, Strada Nuova and Via Aurea, and Madame de Staël nicknamed it the Street of Kings.
05 Church of St. Peter
Chiesa di San Pietro
Italy44.048° N 9.832° E
Image by Zotx from Pixabay At the very tip of the Porto Venere peninsula, on a rock ledge where the Gulf of La Spezia meets the open Ligurian Sea, stands a small church striped in black and white stone.
Did you know? After those blows the ruined church was stripped of its decorative stone, much of which was reused in San Lorenzo and other buildings in town.
06 San Fruttuoso Abbey
Abbazia di San Fruttuoso
Italy · 22.1 km from Genoa44.316° N 9.175° E
Irin Acassi · CC BY-SA 4.0 San Fruttuoso Abbey was founded by Benedictine monks sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries, tucked into a cove on the Portofino promontory that is still reachable only by boat or on foot.
Did you know? The church's tenth-century dome shows Byzantine influence; it was later enclosed in an octagonal tower with typical Genoese stone decoration.
07 Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno
Cimitero monumentale di Staglieno
Italy · 2.7 km from Genoa44.430° N 8.950° E
Image by OudsidEscape from Pixabay Staglieno is less a graveyard than a city of marble built by nineteenth-century Genoa for its dead. Planned first by Carlo Barabino and, after his death in 1835, carried through by Giovanni Battista Resasco, it opened on 2 January 1851 on the slopes of the Bisagno valley.
Did you know? The architect Carlo Barabino died in the cholera epidemic of 1835, the year his plan for the cemetery was approved.
08 Christ of the Abyss
Italy · 22.3 km from Genoa44.313° N 9.175° E
Lucianoro1 · CC BY-SA 4.0 In 1947, Dario Gonzatti — one of the first Italians to dive with self-contained scuba gear — died during an expedition off this stretch of the Ligurian coast, between Camogli and Portofino.
Did you know? Although it was conceived as a memorial to Dario Gonzatti, the statue was later also dedicated to the memory of Duilio Marcante himself.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Liguria?
- On our list, Vernazza ranks first, followed by Manarola and Portofino.
- What are the Cinque Terre?
- They are five villages on the Ligurian coast, Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore, which together with Portovenere and its islands form a UNESCO World Heritage Site for their terraced cultural landscape.
- What is the Christ of the Abyss?
- It is a bronze statue of Christ by Guido Galletti, placed on the seabed in the bay of San Fruttuoso in 1954 in memory of those lost at sea; divers visit it underwater.
- What are the Palazzi dei Rolli in Genoa?
- They are palaces of Genoa's aristocratic families that were listed in official registers, the rolli, to host visiting dignitaries; many line Via Garibaldi and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Liguria?
- In our collection, the places in Liguria are most often villages (3), churches (1), abbeys (1) and cemeteries (1).
- How many places are on this list in Liguria?
- The list covers 8 places.