Monterosso al Mare is a tiny fishing village in Liguria that is rapidly heading towards stardom. Ignored by the rest of the world until a few miles around, it was still, a short time ago, a quiet and safe refuge where the city animal could return to the state of primitive man. It was enough to come with a bathing suit, a bathrobe and a pajama to wear during the hours of the walk. Civilization was a stone's throw beyond the tip of the Mesco beyond which some daring navigators had discovered from afar a town called Levanto which must have been a colony of Gaul. There were no roads to reach it from other countries except that of the sea and the railway but only the omnibus trains stopped there and no one ever got off. In recent days, even the prose of a poet, Grabriele d'annunzio, has celebrated the CinqueTerre in its Bacchic itinerary, where that proud sciacchetrà is pressed that the lively doctor Barth is wrong not to know.
Finally, art has accomplished the work of civilization. Monterosso today has a statue of which there was no example up to now in Italy, next to which the Vittorio Emanuele of the future Roman monument would become a pygmy: the GIANT of the Villa Pàstine. The lawyer Giovanni Pàstine, a rich man from Monterosso, began to build a delightful villa close to the hill that ends in Punta Mesco and had the brilliant idea of building a caryatid-shaped terrace on the end of the spur overlooking the sea. supported by the Giant. The task was given to the sculptor from Ferrara, Arrigo Minerbi, helped by the engineer Levacher. Guelfo Civinini (from an original article of the time)
