Manarola may be the oldest of the five Cinque Terre villages: the cornerstone of its church, San Lorenzo, is dated 1338, and the town's own name likely descends from the Latin magna rota, "great wheel," a reference to the mill wheel that once turned in the village.
Its tall, narrow tower houses stack directly above a small rocky inlet where local fishermen still keep boats and where swimmers dive straight off the concrete slipway into deep water. The local wine, Sciacchetra, a sweet passito made from grapes dried on racks after harvest, comes from the steep terraced vineyards climbing the hills immediately above the houses, worked the same way for generations because no other method suits slopes this severe. The view that has come to represent the entire Cinque Terre in guidebooks and postcards, the tower houses seen from the headland footpath toward Corniglia at dusk, is simply Manarola looking back at itself from the trail above.
