Photography workshop – Photography is a language too, but, as shown by the etymology of the word, the light is used to write. And the light illuminating the landscape of the Cinque Terre is without any doubts very special. A professional photographer, after a brief theoretical introduction, will guide the students to capture the most interesting highlights. The best photos will be exhibited in a show open to the public and set up by our student at the end of the course.

Music workshop – Listening to songs is an extremely pleasing way to learn a language. During this workshop, we will passionately travel through the Italian song history: we will get close to the pieces – looking at the texts and understanding the socio-cultural context – of the most important Italian songwriters, such as the Genoese De André, Guccini, De Gregori and Battisti. The folk band Grandi & fanti will join us playing live some of the songs and we will also have the pleasure to listen to their pieces written in Ligurian language.

Geography workshop – The landscape is not only created by the nature, but by humans too, who through their processing operations, have modified the aspect of the land. This appears to be true for, as an example, agricultural landscapes, in particular for the terraced landscape of the Cinque Terre, which with seven-thousand-kilometre of dry stone walls represents a unique example in the world of anthropic landscape. For this reason, it has become national park and UNESCO world heritage site. During this class, we will visit terraces and observe building a dry stone wall. The keynote lecture will take place in the castle of Riomaggiore, where a permanent exhibition about terraced landscape is set.

Cultural hiking – We will walk through the old stone mule track up to the valley of Rio Maggiore until the shrine of Montenero and the deserted villages of Limen and Cacinagora. On our way, crossing huge stairs and ancient fountains, we will listen to a legend orally passed down by the people for generations. According to this tradition, Riomaggiore was founded by Greek refugees, run away from their homeland in order to rescue a religious painting of Madonna which is still stored within the shrine. During the keynote lecture, two classical philologists from the university of Pisa will talk about the influence of the Greek culture on the Italian one travelling back in time from Magna Graecia to the Byzantine era.

Astronomy workshop – The Cinque Terre offers their visitors a great variety of experience and beauty. Among them, there is the possibility to enjoy a wonderful starry sky during summer nights, and often the flash of the Milky Way too. Guided by an astrophiles association, we will be able to gaze at the stars using a telescope and learn to identify the constellations.