About this journey

La Spezia Centrale station, inaugurated in 1887, stands at the southern end of one of Italy's most demanding railway undertakings — the Genoa–Pisa line, which follows the Ligurian coast northward through the Cinque Terre toward Genoa and on to Recco.

The Sestri Levante–La Spezia section, the most difficult stretch of the route, was authorised by royal decree on 27 October 1860, yet the rugged coastline made construction extraordinarily slow. Materials had to be transported by sea because long stretches were inaccessible by land, and violent storms caused repeated delays. The section finally opened on 24 July 1874, ending the isolation of the Cinque Terre villages. Within its 44 kilometres it contains 51 tunnels totalling over 28 kilometres and 23 bridges with a combined length of nearly one kilometre. The line is fully electrified at 3,000 V DC, a system that replaced the earlier three-phase supply in April 1947, and track doubling across the Cinque Terre was completed in 1971. Regional suburban trains on this corridor use Recco as one of their main termini. In 1943 Allied bombing destroyed the railway at Recco and damaged around 80% of the town's infrastructure; the rebuilt station now marks the end of a journey that compresses tunnel, cliff, and coastline into just under an hour.