Cinque Terre Parking: Where to Leave Your Car

Riomaggiore, Manarola, Vernazza and Corniglia restrict vehicle access to residents. Automatic barriers or a ZTL boundary sit right at each village entrance, and non-resident cars are stopped there. The streets behind those barriers are narrow, steep and often little more than lanes between houses. There is no room for visitor parking and no room for visitor traffic.

Drive past a barrier into a resident-only zone and a fine follows, usually caught on camera. The rule is enforced, not decorative. Our Cinque Terre map shows how tightly the villages sit between the hills and the sea, which explains the policy in one glance.

The consequence for trip planning is simple. If you arrive by car, you park outside the village and walk, ride the train, or take the seasonal ferry. Corniglia has no ferry landing at all, so train or foot is the only way in. Plan arrival times, luggage and routes around that fact from the start.

Monterosso al Mare: Fegina

The Fegina car park sits on Via Fegina, next to the station and the beach. It has 270 spaces, including 5 for disabled drivers, making it by far the largest public lot in the five villages.

In high season, from 21 March to 31 October, it costs US$2.84 (€2.50) per hour between 08:00 and 22:00, and US$0.57 (€0.50) per hour overnight from 22:00 to 08:00. A full 24 hours costs US$28.40 (€25). Staying longer gets cheaper, with days 3 to 7 at US$11.37 (€10) per day and day 8 onward at US$5.68 (€5) per day. In low season the rate drops to US$2.27 (€2) per hour and US$22.70 (€20) for 24 hours. A nice detail: the ticket includes use of the public toilets.

This is the lot to aim for if you want to sleep in Monterosso with a car nearby, or if you want a beach day with the car close. Spaces fill fast in summer, so arrive early. The tariff comes from the comune's own notice, so it is the number to trust over anything third parties publish.

La Spezia: the Interchange Lots

La Spezia is the main gateway for drivers coming from the south, and the station area has two options.

The first is the ATC MP interchange car park run by the municipal parking company. The first 12 hours are free, which covers most day trips on its own. After that it costs US$2.27 (€2) per hour, charged by the full hour and not divisible, so a stay of 13 hours and one minute costs 14 hours. Subscription packages exist if you are staying longer. From here the Cinque Terre Express runs straight into the villages.

The second is a separate paid area near the station, reported by parking aggregators at US$1.71 (€1.50) per hour from 08:00 to 20:00 and US$1.14 (€1) per hour overnight, open 24 hours every day. That figure has not been confirmed on an official page, so treat it as indicative rather than certain.

La Spezia works well as a driving base for more than the villages. It puts Portovenere within easy reach and connects to the rest of our La Spezia coverage.

Levanto: the Station Lots

Levanto sits at the northern end of the line and is the natural base for drivers coming down the coast from Genoa. Two paid car parks serve the station.

P4 is on Via On. Zoppi, cars only, and non-residents pay US$2.27 (€2) per hour, US$14.78 (€13) for 8 hours or US$27.30 (€24) for 24 hours. P20 is at the new station area. Between the station lots there are about 100 spaces. Both are managed by Levante Multiservizi, the comune's own service company.

One hundred spaces is not a lot for a town that swells in summer, so arrive early or consider the train from further up the coast instead. Levanto itself has a beach and a proper town centre, which makes it a good base in its own right, not just a car park with a platform.

National rental chains keep desks at La Spezia Centrale station and at Pisa and Genoa airports, the two airports most visitors use. No official rate card is published here, and daily prices move constantly with demand, so check current rates with the rental companies directly.

Think hard about what the car is actually for. Since four of the five villages cannot be driven into, a rental does nothing for village-to-village travel. The train does that job faster and cheaper. What a car does do is open up day trips: the churches and viewpoints of Portovenere, the harbour at Portofino, or the hill towns along the wider Riviera.

If a car is only for one or two of those days, rent it for exactly those days in La Spezia rather than for the whole trip. If you would rather skip driving altogether, organised trips cover the same ground. A round-trip shore excursion to Pisa from La Spezia handles the famous tower without you touching a steering wheel, and plenty of other Cinque Terre tours start on foot or by boat.

One more caution: if your travel dates overlap a transport strike, a rental car suddenly becomes valuable as a fallback. Keep an eye on our transport strike page if you are depending on trains.

La Spezia Centrale is the southern end of the line and the bigger interchange, with trains onward to Pisa, Florence, Genoa and Milan (see Cinque Terre airports for the connections). The ATC MP interchange lot there gives the first 12 hours free, then US$2.27 (€2) per hour, which suits a day trip that starts and ends the same day better than a multi-day stay, since the hourly rate adds up fast without a subscription. La Spezia is also the base for shore excursions if a cruise brought you here instead of a car.

Levanto sits at the northern end, past Monterosso, and is a beach town in its own right rather than a transit city. The P4 and P20 lots near its station run a flat US$2.27 (€2) per hour with capped 8-hour and 24-hour rates, which reads simpler for a multi-day stay than La Spezia's free-then-hourly structure. Levanto also puts you one stop from Monterosso, the only village you can also drive directly into, so a Levanto base lets you choose between the train and, for that one village only, the car.

Neither town is closer to the middle three villages, Vernazza, Corniglia and Manarola, since both sit at opposite ends of the same line and every village in between is reached by the same train regardless of where you parked. Pick La Spezia if your trip continues by rail to another city, and Levanto if you are staying several days and want a quieter base with its own beach.