Nessun Dorma

The bar takes its name from the aria in Puccini’s Turandot, and a young Luciano Pavarotti appears on the label of its own wine. It is entirely outdoors, among terraces and plants on the headland, and at its best in the late afternoon and at sunset.

By day it runs a Pesto Experience: guests pick basil from the bar’s own plants and pound it in a marble mortar, then sit down to lunch with a glass of Cinque Terre white.

The menu is deliberately simple, with no pasta or pizza: bruschette, focaccia, boards of cured meats and cheeses, salads, and summer plates of burrata, Parma ham and melon. To drink, try the limoncino spritz, or a glass of the bar’s own Cinque Terre white, made with a Manarola winemaker from Bosco, Albarola and Vermentino grapes.

The Cinque Terre is a marine protected area, so yachts moor on permitted buoys off the villages, including a buoy field off Manarola, and guests come in by tender to the tiny harbour. From there, a path runs along the cliff and up the steps to Punta Bonfiglio. Portovenere is the nearest marina with berths for larger yachts.

You cannot book a table for aperitivo. Instead, join the virtual queue in the Nessun Dorma app once you are in Manarola, and it alerts you as your turn comes; waits can run to an hour or more in late summer. It closes on Tuesdays and in bad weather, and is open from spring to autumn.