The church of Saint Peter in Portovenere, in the province of La Spezia, Liguria, juts out from a rock spur onto the Gulf of Poets, an area that was dear to great artists such as George Sand, David Herbert Lawrence, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
After his visit here, Lord Byron wrote a poem that begins, There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, / There is a rapture on the lonely shore, / There is society, where none intrudes, / By the deep sea, and music in its roar.
