Manarola

Perhaps the oldest — and the most photographed.

Manarola may be the eldest of the five, settled from the Roman hamlet of Volastra and first named in 1261. Its colourful houses tumble down the rock to a tiny harbour, with the Ligurian-Gothic church of San Lorenzo, from 1338, standing above.

This is the home of Sciacchetrà, the prized sweet wine pressed from grapes on the steep terraces — amber, honeyed, scented with dried apricot. Each winter those same hillsides become the world's largest nativity scene, a labour of love begun by Mario Andreoli in 1961.