You can’t make up a place like Portovenere. Its confection of tall pastel-colored homes and ancient stone walls lining a sparkling blue harbor dedicated to Venus has inspired generations of romantic poets and artists.
Visitors and locals mingle on narrow streets that stay shaded and naturally cool in the summer heat. Staircases built of lava rock lead to a fantastic cove where poet Lord Byron is said to have brooded while writing odes to beauty and nature.
Best of all, Portovenere’s narrow harbor is too small for ferries and cruise ships to get into. That makes it much more exclusive than the five neighboring villages along this Ligurian coast who have banded together to market themselves to tourists as the Cinque Terre. Portovenere is a gateway to the Cinque Terre, but very much its own attraction.
We’re here on a cruise aboard Atlas Ocean Voyages’ new World Traveller, that carries just 200 guests and even we must anchor offshore and reach the jetty by tender to explore a “new town” that dates back 900 years and visit the Grand Hotel Portovenere that started life as a convent in the Renaissance.
Discovering the colorful local customs
Everyone who lives here is incredibly fit by necessity. Stair climbing is a way of life in homes that are six and seven stories tall and too narrow to have elevators. The main street winds up a steep slope and the side lanes are staircases that reach higher still.
Improbably though, the local kids run everywhere, even when the summer temperatures reach the 90s. That’s when the young men tend to strip off their shirts and race each other up and down the streets to get attention of the local girls. And everyone eventually ends up in the water.
The year-round population of Portovenere is just 3,500 and the number of day visitors is only in the hundreds, so the shops cater more to locals needs and small family run eateries rather than the chain boutiques and souvenir shops that have invaded nearby Portofino and the Cinque Terre.
Laundry hangs from balconies to dry and the tunes strummed by musicians reverberate off tall stucco walls. The owner of the local pasta store on the town square sprinkles water on the hot sidewalk to cool the air for customers. Wood carvers and sandal makers invite visitors to watch them craft their wares without any sales pitches.
It all started with Venus
The tip of this rocky coast was named Portovenere (Port of Venus) because an early temple dedicated in Roman times to the goddess Venus Ericina was its landmark at the tip of the bay. Tradition has it that the goddess was born from the sea foam that forms when waves churn against the jagged rocks below.
In the Middle Ages, an imposing castle and high, crenulated stone walls enclosed what became a fortified city and the temple was replaced by a church dedicated to St. Peter. But the local dedication to beauty persists.
It always attracted the stars
In the Romantic era, this coast became known as the Gulf of Poets for the many literary figures from England, Germany and Russia who were attracted here on their travels abroad. Most famous were the British poets Lord Byron who lived in Portovenere in the early 1800s and his friends Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelly who had a place in Lerici, across the Gulf.
A must-see is a grotto of incredibly twisted rocks that seems to have a magnetic attraction for swimmers on hot days. A plaque over its archway is dedicated to Lord Byron, who is said to have at least once made a swim of nearly five miles just to visit the Shellys. Their friendship was cut short in 1822, as Percy Shelly drowned at the age of 29 when his sailboat sank off the coast in a storm.
In modern days, life on the Gulf is still often visited by notable artists, including Steven Spielberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, Patti Smith and Andrea Bocelli.
Experiencing it all in Grand style
The stage-set perfect scene is all at your feet, quite literally, from the terrace of the Grand Hotel Portovenere, that’s the town’s luxury retreat on the corner of the bay.
It was originally built in 1616 as the Convent of San Francesco for the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor. When the monks moved out, the town moved in. Post World War II, it became a town hall and elementary school. More recently, it was completely renovated into a luxury hotel.
The monks of old would probably have been aghast at the indulgences now served up at the hotel’s Venus Bar, dedicated to The Cloudy Planet. Its menu features the usual favorites of Aperol spritzes and Champagne cocktails but flirts with exotics and tequila and mezcal. This year’s signatures are the Forbidden City, blended with Chinotto nero, passion fruit liquor, mango and lime juice and Woman in Love No. 2, a scarlet beverage of vodka, elderflower liquor, lemon and muddled raspberries.
Savoring the essence of Liguria
Then it’s up to the Grand Hotel’s Palmaria Restaurant on a spectacular veranda with the city’s best vista of Portovenere. The restaurant’s design is inspired by modern yachts, with wood flooring resembling teak decks and cushions, made by a local upholsterer in the yellow, pink and green hues featured in the colors of Portovenere’s houses.
The menu features fresh-picked local produce, catches of the day and mussels and oysters harvested from a sustainable aquaculture bed in the water off Palmaria island across the bay. The delightful Ligurian white and rose wines on the menu are local vintages you won’t find in shops anywhere else because the vineyard produces in such small quantities. Enjoying a wonderfully grilled sea bass, I wondered what Lord Byron, who is honored with a suite in the hotel, would write about this stunning scene today.
A stanza from Byron’s poem She Walks in Beauty is certainly apt:
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
We have to return to the World Traveller to continue our voyage, but it would be a treat to stay in one of the Grand Hotel’s suites and open the curtains in the morning to the memorable view of this scenic village and write our own ode to beauty.
Portovenere may be less well-known than Portofino or the Cinque Terre, but the charming and less-crowded town really should be considered your first choice for a stay on Italy’s Riviera.
Story by Wallace Immen, The Cruisington Times
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