When I first came to the Cinque Terre, then an isolated stretch of the Italian Riviera south of Genoa, it was a classic “back door”: a string of five pastel-hued hamlets, gently and steadily carving a good life out of difficult seaside terrain. It was authentic, romantic and without a tourist in sight. Fast forward several decades and the once-sleepy villages are now on Instagram bucket lists and mobbed in high season by organized tours and cruise-ship excursions.

The resident population of the five towns (Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore) is just 4,000 — but it’s estimated that some 2.5 million travelers visit annually. And it’s not just foreign tourists who flock here: Italians love Cinque Terre too.