Free to a good home; must love hard work

Cultivating the terraces is seen as the only guarantee of survival

The Italian Government is offering "world citizens" the chance to own a chunk of priceless Ligurian coastline within the Cinque Terre National Park for nothing.

Well, no money anyway: the snag is you must commit to restoring the terraces using "traditional" (read: "back-breaking") methods and maintaining them for a period of not less than 20 years.

I must confess I'm sorely tempted. With a belly-full of fresh seafood pasta and the bay twinkling like a disco ball in the sun, 20 years in this beautiful place seems like scant hardship.

Cinque Terre ("Five Lands") refers to a 15km stretch of coastline clasped between two rocky promontories, which extend like arms into the Mediterranean.

The five "lands" are the fishing villages of Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore, which cling to the cliffs like clusters of multi-coloured barnacles.

Over the past 1000 years, anonymous generations of peasant farmers have transformed this landscape, painstakingly building and rebuilding thousands of kilometres of dry-stone terraces on which they planted grapevines and other crops.

Even before the Christian communities set up here centuries ago, before the Roman garrisons and traders, the indigenous people of Cinque Terre made their mark on the land.

Ancient neolithic sites and menhirs dot the countryside, testament to a long relationship between people and the land, a delicate balance rarely achieved and difficult to sustain.

The stone walls form a fine fretwork of venerable wrinkles all over the hillsides.

The area was made into a national park in 1999 and has been declared a Unesco World Heritage site. It is estimated to have almost 7000km of stone walls.

But this unique landscape is in danger of disappearing. Park official Massimiliano Ceresoli, co-ordinator of the Life Project to restore the terraces, says when maintenance operations ceased, decline was immediate and dramatic. "This process is very close to being irreversible," he warns. "The tourists who come and fall in love with the landscape have no idea how close we are to losing it."

In the latter 20th century, with the trend towards urbanisation, young people have shown less inclination to follow their forebears and spend their lives eking out a subsistence existence from the rocky soil.

Entire hillsides were abandoned and nature quickly and pitilessly undid the patient work of centuries. It's not just a matter of aesthetics- collapsed terraces can cause landslides, which threaten villages. A whole way of life is on the verge of being wiped out.

The idea of reinforced cement and protective nets was dismissed as "foreign, squalid and artificial" by locals and heritage experts, who came up with the radical solution of giving away the land.

But taking part in the restoration plan is no Mediterranean picnic. Each plot (up to 3000sq/m) must be cultivated according to an agricultural plan formulated by the park.

The plan centres on the restoration of "historical vines", which were supplanted late last century by inferior species.

Help is available with difficult jobs, such as wall reconstruction, from "ad hoc co-operatives" of young people, many of them students from the University of Genova, at prices set by the park.

The park supplies free technical help and consultancy and maintains a "supervisory" role.

As it is a national park, with one of the richest biodiversities in Europe, only organic practices are allowed, which are extremely labour-intensive. About 200 people work on the project at present.

More than 20,000 requests for information from interested parties have been responded to so far, and 100 people have taken on 20-year commitments.

Ceresoli says most inquiries have come from Germans and Italians living abroad, particularly Australians of Italian ancestry.

But would-be pseudo-peasants have to be prepared to make major adjustments, he says. "We give lots of help, but it is hard for them. They are starting a new life in a new place; they need to find a job and learn the language - it can be a problem."

The locals have welcomed the newcomers, he says. "They are glad, because in the past they saw only young people moving away."

With funding from the European Community, the Life Project is working to diversify the Cinque Terre economy, introducing commercial lemon and basil growing, as well as viticulture.

Ceresoli admits it would be impossible - and not necessarily advisable - to artificially recreate the old peasant world.

"We want a living park, not an open-air museum. The Cinque Terre National Park is founded on a principle of an anthropised territory. It is a unique relationship between man and environment, which balances the needs of each.

"At present, abandoned terraces far outnumber the few cultivated ones, and this plan represents the only guarantee of survival of this unique environment."

- NZPA