Eugenio Montale Literary Park

The Five Lands are a stretch of coast of the Ligurian Riviera of Levante, where there are five villages, also called "lands": Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, Riomaggiore. They are located in the province of La Spezia, a town from which a bay extends to the municipality of Portovenere. Since 1997 the territory that goes from the Five Lands to Portovenere has become part of the World Heritage (UNESCO). From a literary point of view the Five Lands are the protagonist landscape of the first poem by Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), Ossi di seppia, (“The Bones of Cuttlefish”), published in 1925: the poet, in fact, spends the summers of his childhood and adolescence in the family house, located in Monterosso, along the coast of Fegina, in front of Punta Mesco. The house, now a private residence and therefore not open to visitors, is the protagonist of the story “La casa delle due palme” (“The House of Two Palms”), in which Montale speaks of a “villa, una pagoda giallognola e un po’ stinta, vista di sbieco, con due palme davanti, simmetriche ma non proprio eguali” (“a house, a pagoda yellowish and somewhat divided, with a blurred view, with two palms in front, symmetrical but not exactly equal”) or of the text “Antico, sono ubriacato dalla voce” (“Ancient sea, the voice has made me drunk”), in which it alludes to “la casa delle mie estati lontane” (“the house in which I passed my distant summers”). Some details of the building are also in the center of the Montalian lines: the balcony of the house, the garden, the fountain are objective correlative in “Il canneto rispunta i suoi cimelli” (“The reeds reappear its relics”), “Vasca” (“Bath”), “Cara agli dei” (“Dear to the gods”), “Il balcone” (“The balcony”), “Casa sul mare” (“House on the sea”). The house, with the “Montale” name tag, is located in the centre of the Eugenio Montale Literary Park, inaugurated in 2016, which allows the tourist to appreciate the territory both from a natural and cultural point of view. Excursions and guided walks accompanied by reading the verses of Montale are organized every month.

The landscape of the Five Lands, arid and essential, is the protagonist of the first poem of the writer: “Meriggiare pallido e assorto / presso un rovente muro d’orto / ascoltare tra i pruni e gli sterpi / schiocchi di merli, frusci di serpi” (“Noonday slumber, pallid and rapt / near a scorching wall round a garden patch, / listening among the thorns and bristles”). It is a landscape made of “viuzze che seguono i ciglioni / discendono tra i ciuffi delle canne / e mettono negli orti, tra gli alberi dei limoni” (“alleys that follow the edges / descend between tufts of reeds / and put in the vegetable gardens, among the lemon trees”). Monterosso al Mare is also the place where Montale meets his first love, Anna degli Uberti, also called "Annetta" or "Arletta", who, like him, spent summers in that place. Along a small stream in those areas seems to have happened their meeting: “anche i luoghi (la rupe dei doganieri / la foce del Bisagno dove ti trasformasti in Dafne) / non avevano senso senza di te” (“even the places [the cliff of the customs officers / the mouth of Bisagno where you turned into Daphne] / did not make sense without you”). In the village of Monterosso, the verses of Montale accompany tourists on their journey: panels placed on the rock, in fact, show the words taken from Ossi di seppia. Adjacent to the Five Lands there is the Bay of La Spezia, named by the playwright Sem Benelli in 1910 "Bay of Poets": throughout history, Indeed, numerous poets and artists have spent periods of their lives in these places that have become a source of inspiration for their work. Dante, in Purgatory, quotes these villages: “Tra Lerici e Turbia la più diserta, / la più rotta ruina è una scala, / verso di quella, agevole e aperta” (“Between Lerici and Turbia the most deserted, / the most broken ruin is a ladder, / towards that, easy and open”) and the verses are reported on a hanging plaque. In the following years the bay inspires Petrarch, who praises the sweetness of the landscape and, as far as foreign literature is concerned, Percy Bysshe Shelley who, spending a period in a house in Lerici with Mary Shelley, gives birth to Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici. To pay tribute to the two authors, the Percy B. Shelley Literary Park was inaugurated in the summer of 2024, with commemorative plaques and book-shaped sculptures marking the route and the Villa Magni, not visitable but recognizable from the outside. Other plaques commemorate the presence of authors, in particular Lord Byron who, according to legend, took inspiration from the Grotta Arpaia and swam from Portovenere to Lerici to visit his friends Shelley. To bear witness to this, every year in July, the "Byron Cup" is held, a swimming competition that commemorates the path taken by the poet. On the cave instead the following words are engraved: “Questa grotta ispiratrice di Lord Byron ricorda l’immortale poeta che ardito nuotatore sfidò le onde del mare da Portovenere a Lerici” (“This grotto was the inspiration of Lord Byron. It records the immortal poet who as a daring swimmer defied the waves of the sea from Portovenere to Lerici”). The landscape of Portovenere has, finally, inspired again Montale, who describes the newt that comes out from the waves that touch the threshold of a Christian temple. Finally, the beauty of Portovenere also attracted Pasolini, who, in a news report, states: “Comincia una fra le più belle domeniche della mia vita”. (“One of the most beau-tiful Sundays of my life begins”).

How to cite this entry: Anselmo, E. (2025). Eugenio Montale Literary Park. In R. Baleiro, G. Capecchi & J. Arcos-Pumarola (Eds.), E-Dictionary of Literary Tourism. University for For-eigners of Perugia.