The first, great painter who fell in love with the Cinque Terre was Telemaco Signorini. Of his long stays on the coast there remain suggestive glimpses of the villages, of steep slopes up the hills, of vanishing points towards the sea. As Signorini said he was fascinated by the simple life and traditional uses of the province of La Spezia, another genius of the Romantic period also found inspiration in the Gulf of Poets: William Turner. English by birth, Mediterranean by adoption, the painter is famous throughout the world thanks to his landscapes, for which he constantly applied throughout his life. Dedicated from the beginning to the depiction of nature, he found the harmony he sought during the mature period of his poetry, when he finally reached Italy. At the Cinque Terre, Turner devoted himself to the representation of the sublime, which he managed to obtain by faithfully bringing marine storms back onto the canvas. His paintings, surprising result of the union between the mastery of the painter and the purity of the landscape in front of him, still give the viewer the feeling of moving on the waves, of rising and falling with the tides.

The paintings of Antonio Discovolo, an Italian landscape painter who arrived in Manarola to study, spoke of an uncontaminated nature in balance between the calm order of the terraces and the wild fury of the sea. . His ability has left us small masterpieces: some full of passion and symbolism, others characterized by less intense emotions and lightened by the soft light of the moon.

Renato Birolli has also painted his version of the Cinque Terre: vivid, dynamic and incredibly real landscapes. The same painter noted in his diaries: “A perspective where everything falls down or runs upward without allowing postcard-sweetened perceptions”.

But it is for sure the “live” view of the Cinque Terre their best side. For those who love art, the landscapes of the coast of La Spezia are the most beautiful paintings to admire.