Tag: mandrella

Sestri Levante from the Mandrella trail.
From the Mandrella trail I found one of the most rewarding views of Sestri Levante and the Bay of Silence, during one of the first days when the restrictions imposed by the Italian Government had finally started to ease. I was looking for a walk around Sestri Levante, and this route offered much more than a pleasant hike: it opened up a completely different view of the town and its coastline.
It was a particular moment in time. After a long period of restrictions, parks and hiking trails in Liguria were beginning to reopen, and I took the opportunity to return to a route that starts in the centre of Sestri Levante, climbs towards the Mandrella, continues to Punta Manara and then reaches Riva Trigoso, ending at Villa Ginestra.
After spending so much time away from the trails, simply being able to walk again felt important. I did not need a spectacular destination. Having a path beneath my feet, the landscape around me and my camera ready was already enough.
This photograph was taken during that walk. I wanted to capture the view towards Sestri Levante, with the Bay of Silence becoming the most recognisable part of the panorama. From this elevated position, the town looks completely different from the way it appears when you are walking through its streets.
The Mandrella trail is particularly interesting because it allows you to see Sestri Levante from above and understand the shape of the peninsula much more clearly. The narrow piece of land separates the Bay of Silence from the Bay of Fables, creating the distinctive landscape that has made the town so recognisable.
Sestri Levante, Liguria, Italy, is fascinating to photograph for precisely this reason. The town is closely connected to its peninsula and its two bays, while the trails climbing into the surrounding hills provide viewpoints that reveal a much broader relationship between the town, the sea and the coastline.
I did not take this photograph as a carefully planned landscape composition. For me, it was more about preserving a moment from the walk. After such a long period in which even planning a simple hike with my camera had become unusual, reaching a viewpoint like this one had its own meaning.
The route towards the Mandrella and Punta Manara also shows how quickly the surroundings change as you leave Sestri Levante behind. The urban landscape gradually gives way to vegetation and open viewpoints. The walk is therefore not simply a way of reaching a destination; the changing scenery along the trail becomes part of the experience.
One small historical and geographical detail I find interesting is the role of Punta Manara in the local landscape. The promontory is one of the best-known viewpoints around Sestri Levante and forms a natural divide between the Gulf of Tigullio and the area around Riva Trigoso. From the higher sections of the route, the relationship between the coastline and the surrounding settlements becomes particularly clear.
That day, however, my main interest was photography. After months in which going out with a camera for a walk had become something I could no longer take for granted, photographing the landscape along the trail felt worth remembering.
The view of the Bay of Silence is probably the detail that stays with me most. Seen from above, the famous bay becomes part of a much larger landscape. The buildings of Sestri Levante gather around the coastline, while the peninsula becomes easier to understand as a whole.
This is one of the things I look for when photographing places I already know. I do not necessarily want to reproduce the most familiar view. Instead, I like finding a different position from which an ordinary landscape can become something new. A photograph taken from street level tells one story; the same town seen from a hillside trail tells another.
The walk continued towards Punta Manara and then Riva Trigoso, eventually reaching Villa Ginestra. It was therefore a longer route rather than a short walk to a single viewpoint, and the changing landscape was an important part of the journey.
If you are visiting Sestri Levante and wondering what to see beyond the famous beaches and bays, the trails towards the Mandrella and Punta Manara offer a completely different perspective. For me, the interest lies less in ticking off a destination and more in seeing how the town gradually changes as you climb above it.
The strongest memory from that day, though, remains this particular point on the Mandrella trail. After walking for a while, stopping with my camera and looking down at Sestri Levante was exactly the kind of simple moment I had been waiting to experience again.
Photographs from walks like this also have a special place in my blog. They do not simply document a landscape. They preserve a moment in my own relationship with the places I photograph. In this case, the image records the return to a trail and the rediscovery of a landscape I had already seen many times.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons I continue to photograph familiar places. A landscape does not necessarily need to change for us to see it differently. Sometimes it is enough for us to return after a long absence and look at it again from another point of view.

Have you ever walked the Mandrella trail towards Punta Manara to see Sestri Levante from above? Add a comment or go to the bottom of the site to read what other visitors have written.

Photos taken with Canon EOS M100 camera and Tamron 16-300 lens.

And this is a nice video:

Video recorded with Gopro Hero5.