Living like a local

There are several reasons that lead people to rent a private holiday home in Cinque Terre. One of the most common is that hotels are really a few in the area. It always happens in protected lands. Here new buildings cannot be added to the existing nucleus.

This adds a plus for our visitors: on entering our real homes, they are given the opportunity of living the area like locals!

History of Cinque Terre Rental Activity

Due to the rapid and increasing growth of tourists, all inhabitants, years and years ago, decided to open their houses to visitors.  They gave the travel industry a way of becoming bigger and more important day after day.

The first travellers

At first it was the old village woman that let a couple or a single visitor rent just a tiny room of their tiny, simple apartment. She shared her bathroom with traveller and, most of the times, her table and her food.

It must have been so strange for that lady to have someone next door who barely could speak a word in Italian. Locals at that time did not even speak Italian, but just local dialect.

Very often bizarre and unusual people came as visitors of this area. Artists, painters, photographers, theatre directors fell in  love with this land and followed an unusual way of life and curious habits.

At the same time, thanks to the stranger’s money the old lady could get relief from her extremely poor life, a way to make a living from their four house walls.

That very same house so empty after her husband had died and sons and daughters had left for seeking fortune and jobs in town, for La Spezia or Genoa the less risky ones, for Milan or better “America”, the most adventurous ones.

And maybe the old woman who had let him her son’s room probably felt closer to her child when hearing foreign people speaking that unknown language, that very same language that her child was hearing on the other side of the ocean…and so the tourist tradition of renting private homes in Cinque Terre Riviera started.

I dare say that no bread or soup had better flavour than that the first visitors of Riomaggiore and Manarola, Vernazza, Monterosso and Corniglia had the chance to taste years and years ago when arriving in these our and unknown villages.

Today’s rental activity

And today, it is still a pleasure for a tourist to rent a private room or apartment in this land, it adds so much more taste to a holiday: one can start the day saying “Ciao” e “Come Va?” to ones’ landlord and then what’s better than going down to the cafeteria, mingling with locals in front of a cappuccino.

And then buying groceries at the same, tiny stores where your property owner buys: what a magic! You, for sure, will get advice from the same owner on what kind of vegetables or piece of meat to buy and, then, what’s more precious than listening to recipes suggestion right there?

A LARGER LIVING SPACE WITH PRIVACY AT CHEAPER PRICES