Italy Cliffs Guide 2025: The Most Dramatic Coastal and Inland Landscapes

How the Cinque Terre's terraces were built — and why they're currently falling apart

The Cinque Terre terrace system (the kilometres of dry-stone walls that cut horizontal farming surfaces into the 30-45° cliff slopes) was constructed progressively from the 12th to the 18th century by the farming communities of the five villages — labour-intensive work requiring the construction and maintenance of walls without mortar (secco construction — the stones fitted precisely without any binding material, relying entirely on gravity and friction for structural integrity). At the peak of the terrace cultivation (approximately 1850-1920), the Cinque Terre had approximately 1,000 km of dry-stone terrace walls supporting 1,200 hectares of cultivated land — an extraordinary density of human terraforming work on a steep coastal cliff face. The 20th century brought a reversal: as the younger generations left for factory work in Genoa and La Spezia, the labour needed to maintain the walls disappeared. Without annual maintenance, sections of wall collapse; when a section collapses, the earth above it loses support and slides; the slide takes more wall with it. By 2023, approximately 400 km of terrace walls had collapsed — 40% of the historic total. The catastrophic floods of 2011 (which killed 9 people in the Cinque Terre and caused €400 million of damage) were partly caused by the uncontrolled water runoff that the collapsed terraces could no longer absorb and channel. The restoration of the Cinque Terre terrace system is now a national heritage priority — partly funded by the Cinque Terre access card that tourists pay to use the trails.