The Cinque Terre earns its culinary fame with the savoury side of Liguria — pesto, focaccia, anchovies pulled from the water below the villages. But the coastline keeps a sweeter register too, rooted in its lemon terraces and one of Italy's rarest dessert wines. Here is how to eat your way through it, dish by dish.

Key facts

  • Lemons thrive on these terraced cliffs; Monterosso is particularly proud of its groves and typically celebrates them with a lemon festival in late spring
  • Sciacchetrà, the local sweet wine, is made in tiny quantities from grapes dried after harvest
  • Gelato is best eaten before the afternoon crowds peak — consider it a morning right
  • La Spezia, the gateway city, has a proper daily covered market worth an hour

Gelato with a harbour view

Every village has its gelato counters, and the local flavours are the reason to queue: lemon made from Ligurian fruit, honey, and — this being the homeland of pesto — basil gelato, which sounds like a dare and tastes like summer. The ritual matters as much as the flavour: take the cone to a harbour wall in Vernazza or the rocks below Manarola and eat it slowly while the light changes.

Sciacchetrà, the cliff-grown treasure

The Cinque Terre's signature sweet wine is made from grapes grown on the vertiginous terraces above the villages and dried for weeks before pressing, concentrating them into something amber, honeyed and rare — production is tiny, and bottles are priced accordingly. Order a small glass after dinner, traditionally alongside dry biscuits for dipping. Even a modest pour tells you more about this landscape than any viewpoint.

Everything lemon

Lemon trees cling to the terraces all along this coast, and the villages — Monterosso above all — put the fruit to constant use: lemon cakes and tarts in the bakeries, granita on hot afternoons, marmalades to carry home, and limoncino, Liguria's answer to the better-known limoncello of the south. If you visit in late spring, ask about Monterosso's lemon festival, when the old town turns citrus-yellow for a day.

The pastry counter: Genoese classics

Liguria's baking tradition flows from Genoa down this coastline. Look for pandolce, the region's dense sweet bread studded with raisins and candied fruit, and simple almond and pine-nut biscuits that pair naturally with an afternoon espresso. Village bakeries sell them alongside the focaccia — sweet and savoury sharing one counter, very much the Ligurian way.

Cafés and markets worth the pause

The finest cafés here are the ones with a view attached: terraces above Vernazza's harbour, perches over Manarola's cove. For provisions, small weekly street markets rotate through the villages, while La Spezia's covered market — a short train hop away — is the real thing: fruit, cheese, honey and local baking under one roof, at local prices.

Tip: Buy a bottle of sciacchetrà or a jar of lemon marmalade in the village where you tasted it — quantities are small, and you are unlikely to find the same producer once you leave the coast.