The Cinque Terre or The Five Lands are five villages in the Liguria region of Italy: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. I recently visited two of them, Manarola and Riomaggiore, during a short vacation in Tuscany and Liguria.

These towns are incredible; they have a special atmosphere of small medieval seaside settlements that have kept their historical face because of the surrounding mountain landscape. Over the centuries, people have carefully built terraces on the rugged, steep landscape right up to the cliffs that overlook the sea. Paths, trains and boats connect the villages, but cars cannot reach them from the outside. The Cinque Terre is also famous for the vineyards that surround each town which is a source of pride for local people.

Manarola is the oldest and the second smallest town of the Cinque Terre. Here you can easily access the ocean and “have a bath” during the hotter months. In Riomaggiore, there is boat rental service that gives visitors an opportunity to enjoy the sea.

The Via dell’Amore (Path of Love) is a path connecting Riomaggiore to Manarola. The paved walking path was laid over the rocky cliffs along the sea and is a little more than one kilometer. One part of the path has fences where lovers can place a lock as a symbol of their strong feelings. Another small part passes through a tunnel, where the walls are devoted to declarations of love which anyone can write on.

Text and Photos by Nell Rakhimova

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Entering Matera in the Basilicata region of Italy, in between Puglia and Calabria, was eerie to say the least. The town is said to be one of the world’s oldest, where settlements formed in caves, sassi, out of the natural grottos. In the 1950s, people started inhabiting the caves again due to extreme poverty, lending an infant mortality rate of 50%, a breeding ground for disease, and an Italian scandal of forcing residents into government housing schemes. To throw in a little more drama, Mel Gibson decided to film Passion of the Christ in Matera. I quickly found out why.

There was a chill to Matera, a quiet you couldn’t quite understand or think could possibly be in Italy, a country so rich in noise and chaos. As the sun beat down, the town glowed. A few Italian tourists here and there could be heard only by the snapping of their camera’s lens, opening and closing quickly. Then, the quiet ceased. A wedding procession began honking their horns, parading through town down to the church. Only for a moment did Matera seem like a normal Italian village, where a wedding can be seen in every quaint town on the weekend. Not a resident to be seen or real noise to be heard, Matera’s draws are not of beauty but a reminder of Italy’s impoverished and neglected South.

SuzyGuese.com showcases people and places from around the world not in the ordinary, travel guidebook sense. She is fascinated by the simple way a story can be told, usually with a little humor. Follow @suzyguese on Twitter and find her on Facebook.

Such was the popularity of Anthony that work on the basilica in Padua began immediately after his death in 1231. The site was already attracting pilgrims and it was deemed necessary to raise a proper monument. The exterior was fashioned without a precise architectural style. The elaborate mix of a Romanesque Gothic facade with an eight-domed Byzantine roof and several small belfries give it an eastern look.

St. Anthony was beatified by Pope Gregory IX less than one year after his death. Thirty-two years later the immense Basilica was completed, and the time had come to transfer the body to its new resting place. When the sarcophagus was opened, the body had turned to dust while the saint’s tongue was found miraculously intact and red in color.

Today in the Baroque Chapel of Relics, in the apse at the back of the church, you can see the actual tongue presented in a gold reliquary. Also on display are the saint’s jaw bone and vocal chords.

Text and photo by Stephen Bugno