Hiking the Cinque Terre: There Are Two Cards, and the Walking One Costs a Third of the Other

Our main Cinque Terre guide deliberately left the walking out, on the grounds that it was a separate subject. This is that subject, and the first thing to say is that the pricing is a trap.

There are two Cinque Terre Cards. They have nearly the same name, they are sold on the same screen, and one of them costs about a third of the other. Most people buy the expensive one without noticing there was a choice.

Two cards with almost the same name

The park sells a Cinque Terre Trekking Card and a Cinque Terre Train Card. The difference is one line of the description and about fifteen euros a day.

The Trekking Card buys you the paid trails, which means the Blue Trail between Monterosso, Vernazza and Corniglia and the Via dell’Amore, plus the buses inside the villages, the wifi, free entry to the modern art museum in La Spezia, and the station toilets, which otherwise cost a euro each time. The Train Card is all of that plus unlimited regional trains along the coast, and it is the one our main guide prices at 22 to 35 euros depending on season.

Which one you want depends on a single question: are you going to walk between the villages or train-hop between them? If you are walking the coast path, you are on foot by definition and the trains you need are the one in and the one out, which you would buy anyway. If you plan to see four villages in a day, you will be on and off the train constantly and the Train Card earns its money.

What the Trekking Card costs, including the row nobody quotes

Two things in that table are worth more than the rest.

High season costs fifty per cent more, and the list of high-season days is in a PDF filed somewhere else. You can read the official price page, note down ten euros, and be charged fifteen. Check the calendar before you budget.

And if you are sleeping in the Cinque Terre, the card may cost you five euros. The park sells a five euro version, the same price in high season as in low, to people staying in accommodation affiliated with its sustainability charter. That is a third of the normal adult price and a sixth of the high-season one. It is the last row of the official table and we have not seen it mentioned anywhere else. Ask your hotel whether they are in the scheme before you buy anything.

And here is the clearest illustration of why the card confuses people. The guided walk below is sold at 80 euros a head. Read its own exclusions and the transport and park tickets are not in that figure: the operator prices them separately at 34 euros in low season and 47 in high. So the real cost of the day is 114 to 127 euros, and the operator is being straight about it in a place most people do not read.

80 euros is the guide, not the day

Cinque Terre on Foot and by Train with an Environmental Guide

★★★★★★★★★★4.4 · 27 reviews

A licensed environmental hiking guide, maximum ten people, starting at La Spezia, Manarola or Monterosso. Worth it if you want someone who can name what you are walking through. Two things to know: the 80 euros EXCLUDES the transport and park tickets, which the operator itself prices at 34 to 47 euros, so budget 114 to 127; and the rating is 4.44 from only 27 reviews, which is thin evidence next to the 8,900 on the day trip our main guide covers. In winter, or if the sea is rough, the boat leg becomes a train.

from 80 €

per adult · 6 to 7 hours · GUIDE ONLY, tickets 34 to 47 € extra · minimum 2 people · free cancellation 24h

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The Via dell’Amore: 200 people, 30 minutes, one direction

The famous flat path between Riomaggiore and Manarola closed in 2012 after a landslide and reopened in the summer of 2024, after twelve years and two years of works. That matters for a practical reason: a great deal of the advice still online was written while it was shut, and almost none of it carries a date.

Here is how it works now, from the people who sell the tickets:

• You book a 30-minute time slot, with a maximum of 200 people per slot. There is some tolerance for turning up in a later slot, subject to space.
• Entry is at Riomaggiore, on the left as you come out of the station, and the path is one-way in high season. You come out at Manarola and you do not walk back along it.
• Thirty minutes is the maximum time allowed to cover it.
• You cannot buy the walk on its own. It is only sold as a Cinque Terre Card that includes it, which is the park’s own answer in its FAQ.
• Cards are personal. Your name goes on the back and they check it against your ID. Under-fours are free.
• An orange or red weather alert suspends ticket sales altogether.

If you are coming from Florence for a single day, that booking is an advantage rather than a nuisance. You will know before you leave whether you have a slot, which is more than you can say for the weather on an open trail.

The long hours end on 24 October

Three weeks from now the last bookable slot jumps from nine at night to half past five. If you are planning a late-October or November visit on the basis of something you read in the summer, you are planning around hours that will not exist.

Why the official English page will give you the wrong times

This one is worth spelling out, because it is the sort of thing that sends people to a locked gate.

The Cinque Terre National Park has an English page called How to use the Via dell’Amore. It is the obvious thing to find and it is genuinely official. Its opening-hours table has four rows, and the last one ends on 28 March 2026. We read it on 5 October 2026. It gives no hours at all for today.

The ticketing site, run by the Comune di Riomaggiore, is also official and does carry the current period and the next one. Both were read the same morning. We are not suggesting anyone is being careless; large organisations have more pages than they can keep current. But it does mean that on this subject the shop is more reliable than the notice board, and if the two disagree, believe the one taking the money.

What we have not checked

• We have not walked any of these trails. Everything here is the park’s published tariff and the operator’s published rules.
• Which dates are high season. The park publishes that calendar as a separate PDF and we have not opened it, so we are telling you the two prices and where to look rather than guessing which applies on your date.
• Current trail status. Segments close after heavy rain, sometimes at short notice. Third-party sites were listing the main sections as open when we looked, but we could not confirm that from the park itself and we are not going to publish an open or closed claim we cannot stand behind. Check on the day.
• How hard the Monterosso to Vernazza section is in any terms more useful than other people’s reports.
• Exactly which accommodations are in the affiliated scheme that unlocks the five euro card.

For getting there in the first place, our Florence to Monterosso page counts all 38 services and explains why the itinerary with fewest changes can cost you two hours.

Questions

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