Portovenere

The church of San Pietro stands on a spur of rock at the tip of the promontory, built in 1198 in black and white banded stone on the site of an earlier temple, with a loggia open to the open sea on one side and the gulf on the other. Below it a cave is called Byron's Grotto: the poet is said to have swum from here across to Lerici to visit Shelley, which gave the Gulf of La Spezia its nickname, the Gulf of Poets. Behind the church rises the Doria castle. Three islands lie offshore, Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto; UNESCO listed the town and islands with the Cinque Terre in 1997.

History

Portus Veneris goes back at least to the middle of the 1st century BC, its name said to come from a temple of Venus on the promontory where the church of Saint Peter now stands, or from the hermit Saint Venerius; in Roman times it was a fishing community. After the fall of the Western Empire it was the base of the Byzantine fleet in the northern Tyrrhenian until the Lombards sacked it in 643, and it suffered frequent Saracen raids. A castle is first recorded in 1113, the walls went up in 1161, and the town passed from a family of Vezzano to the Republic of Genoa; in 1494 an Aragonese fleet bombarded it heavily, after which the old town declined in favour of the Borgo Nuovo around Saint Peter's. Under French domination it became part of the Ligurian Republic in 1797, and in 1997 Porto Venere, its islands and the Cinque Terre became a World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, Porto Venere).

Highlights

• San Pietro - a striped Gothic church on a rock above open sea.
• Byron's Grotto - the cave below linked to the poet's swim.
• The Doria castle - a fortress rising behind the town.
• Palmaria island - the largest of three islands just offshore.

When to go

May to September; boats to the islands and along the coast run in the warm months. August is crowded. Winter closes many services in a small town.

Things to know

The town is one long street and quickly walked. Parking is difficult and restricted. Island boats depend on the sea state and can be cancelled.

Nearby

The Cinque Terre lie north; Lerici is across the gulf.

Key facts