Cimitero di Monterosso

The Cimitero di Monterosso clings to a jagged ridge high above the village, identifiable by the stark white arcades that terrace the steep hillside. It began as a solution to the shortage of flat ground in the Cinque Terre, where space for the living was precious and space for the dead was even scarcer. Eugenio Montale, the Nobel Prize-winning poet, spent his childhood summers in a villa just below these walls, and he frequently wandered among these silent, stacked marble vaults overlooking the sea.