Visit to Porto Venere

Porto Venere(Portovenere until 1991) is a town and commune  on the Ligurian coast of Italy. It comprises the three villages of Fezzano, Le Grazie and Porto Venere, and the three islands of Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto. In 1997 UNESCO designated Porto Venere  as a World Heritage Site.

We visited Porto Venere in July 2016 whilst on a cruise. We were docked in the port of La Spezia and travelled by a small boat to Porto Venere.

La Spezia is one of the ports used by cruise lines for visiting Florence and  Piza. For the majority of visitors to La Spezia these are the main attractions but excursions are long and are not that kid friendly. We have also visited both before and were attracted to photographs of Porto Venere.

We spent an enjoyable couple of hours walking down the narrow streets & viewing the coastline. For families the is plenty of unusual sites to explore which the kids enjoyed. The town is very pretty with lots of colourful buildings.

The were plenty of interesting shops and restaurants to visit. Unfortunately it was a short stop and we really did not get enough time to explore the town. We briefly saw the Church of Saint Peter & Doria Castle but did not get the time to explore.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware we are big fans of family cruising. One of the biggest criticisms we hear about cruising is you don’t get long enough in a destination to really explore. Generally I don’t feel this is the case but Porto Venere is an exception. Although it was only a half day trip the ship was still in port for several more hours.

Those extra few hours would have been well spent in Porto Venere. The were plenty of appealing places to have lunch and it was unfortunate we did not have time to experience a local restaurant.

Porto Venere; is a very beautiful town and from our short visit I would recommend going. The kids seemed to enjoy it as the was plenty to explore. If visiting on a cruise Piza & Florence are the main attractions but with kids I think Porto Venere is a good alternative.

I think this will be marked as somewhere to return to in the future. My shorts video contains some of the sights from Porto Venere and views along the coast. If anyone knows who the singer in the video is please let me know.