The Amalfi Coast

Occupying the southern side of Sorrento’s peninsula, the Amalfi Coast ( Costiera Amalfitana) lays claim to being Europe’s most beautiful stretch of coast, its corniche road winding around the towering cliffs that slip almost sheer into the sea. By car or bus it’s an incredible ride (though it can mighty congested in summer), with some of the most spectacular stretches between Salerno and Amalfi. If you’re staying in Sorrento especially, it shouldn’t be missed on any account; in any case the towns along here hold the beaches that Sorrento lacks. The coast as a whole has become rather developed, and these days it’s one of Italy’s ritzier bits of shoreline, villas atop its precarious slopes fetching a bomb in both cash and kudos. While it’s home to some stunning hotels, budget travellers should be aware that you certainly get what you pay for here.

Positano

There’s not much to POSITANO, only a couple of decent beaches, an interesting Duomo (currently under renovation), and a great many boutiques; the town has long specialized in clothes made from linen, georgette and cotton, as well as handmade shoes and sandals. But it’s location, heaped up in a pyramid high above the water, has inspired a thousand postcards and helped to make it a moneyed resort that runs a close second to Capri in the celebrity stakes. Since John Steinbeck wrote up the place in glowing terms black in 1953, the town has enjoyed a fame quite out of proportions to its glowing terms back in 1953, the town has enjoyed a fame quite out of proportion to its size. Franco Zeffirelli is just one of many famous names who have villas nearby, and the people who come here to lie on the beach consider themselves a cut above your average sun-worshipper.

The beaches

Positano is, of course, expensive, but its beaches are nice enough and don’t get too crowded. The main beach, the Spiaggia Grande right in front of the village, is reasonable, although you’ll be sunbathing among the fishing boats unless you want to pay over the odds for the pleasanter bit on the far left. There’s also another larger stretch of beach, Spiaggia del Fornillo, around the headland to the west, accessible in five minutes by a pretty path that winds around from above the hydrofoil jetty – although its main section is also a pay area. Nonetheless the bar-terrace of the Pupetto hotel, which runs along much of his length, is a chaper place to eat and drink than anywhere in Positano proper.

Praiano and around

Around 6km east of Positano, PRAIANO consists of two tiny centres: Vettica Maggiore, which is Praiano proper, scattered along the main road from Positano high above the sea; and Marina di Praia, squeezed into a cleft in the rock down at shore level, a couple of kilometers further along towards Amalfi. Praiano is much smaller and quieter than Positano, and although there’s not much to either bit of the village, it does make a more peaceful and authentic place to stay than it’s more renowned neighbour. There are a few decent places to swim, the closest being immediately below town at the Spiaggia Gavitella – reachable from the main road along the path from the San Gennaro restaurant – and there’s a small patch of shingly beach at Marina di Praia, surrounded by a couple of restaurants and places offering rooms. There’s also marked trail from here that connects to the path of the Gods.

The Grotta dello Smeraldo

Conca dei Marini - Daily: April-Oct 9am-4pm; Nov-March 10am-4pm- eur.5; taxi-boat from either Praiano or Amalfi eur.10 retourn).
About 4km out of Praiano, the Grotta dello Smeraldo is one of the most highly touted local natural features around here, a flooded cavern in which the sunlight turns the water a vivid shade of green. It’s not unimpressive, but is basically one huge chamber and it doesn’t take long for the boatman to whisk you around the main features, best of which is the intense colour of the water, and the stalagmites and stalactites that puncture, and drip from, every surface.

Amalfi and Atrani

Cradled in a wide cleft in the cliffs, AMALFI, a mere 4km or so east of Praiano, is the largest town and perhaps the highlight of the coast. It has been an established seaside resort since Edwardian times, when the British upper classes found the town a pleasant spot to spend their winters. Actually, Amalfi’s credentials go back much much further: it was an independent republic during Byzantine times and one of the great naval powers, with a population of some seventy thousand; Webster’s Duchess of Amalfi was set here, and the city’s traders established outposts all over the Mediterranean, setting up the Order of the Knights of St John or Jerusalem. Amalfi was finally vanquished by the Normans inn 1131, and the town was devastated by an earthquake in 1343, but there is still the odd remnant of Amalfi’s past glories around today, and the town has a crumbly attractiveness to its whitewashed courtyards and alleys that makes it fun to wander trough. Plus there is a decent, mostly sandy beach to the left of the busy seafront, as well as in the attractive next-door resort of Atrani.

The Duomo

Piazza Duomo- Daily 9am-7pm-free,Museum cloister and crypt eur.3
The Duomo, at the top of a steep flight of steps, utterly dominates the town’s main piazza, its tiered, almost gaudy faced topped by a glazed tiled cupola that’s typical of the area. The bronze doors of the church came from Constantinople and date from 1066. Inside it’s a mixture of Saracen and Romanesque styles, though now heavly restored, and the cloister – the so – called Chiostro Del Paradiso – is the most appealing part of the building, oddly Arab in feel with its withewashed arches and palms. The adjacent museum, housed in an ancient, bare basilica, dates back to the sixth century and has various medieval and Episcopal treasures, most intriguingly an eighteenth-century sedan chair from Macau, used by the bishop of Amalfi, a thirteenth-century mitre sewn with myriad seed pearls and a lovely fourteenth-century bone-and-ebony inlaid box, made by the renowned Embriarchi studio in Venice. Steps lead down from the museum to the heavily decorated crypt, where the remains of the apostle St. Andrew lie under the altar, brought here (minus head) from Constantinople by the Knights of Malta in 1204.

The Arsenale

Largo Cesareo-Daily-11am-6pm- eur.2 ( 089 871 170 www.museoarsenaleamalfi.it).
Facing the waterfront square, the town’s ancient, vaulted Arsenale is a reminder of the former military might of Amalfi, used to build the maritime republic’s fleet. Now it hosts temporary exhibitions and a small museum containing bits and pieces including the costumes worn by the great and the good of the town for the Regatta of the Maritime Republics, and the city banner, showing the emblems of Amalfi – the diagonal red strip and Maltese cross you see everywhere.

Museo della Carta

Via delle cartiere 23- March-Oct daily 10am-6.30pm; Nov-Feb- Tues, Wed & Fri- Sun 10am-3.30pm – eur.4 (089 830 4561, www.museodellacarta.it).
At the top of Via Genova, a fifteen-minute walk from the main square, The Museo Carta is housed in a paper mill that dates from 1350 and claims to be the oldest in Europe. The valley beyond the museum is still known as the Valle Dei Mulini (Valley of Mills), because it was once the heart of Amalfi’s paper industry, with around fifteen functioning mills. This is the only one to survive, and it makes alle the high-spec paper you see on sale around town. Tours take in the tools of the trade and the original paper-making process and equipment, including that in use when the mil shut down un 1969.

Atrani

Just a short walk around the headland from Amalfi – or an even shorter walk through the pedestrian tunnel from Piazza Municipio – ATRANI is to all extents and purposes an extension of Amalfi. Indeed, it was another part of the maritime republic, with a similary styled church also sorting a set of bronze doors from Constantinople, manufactured in 1086; It’s a quiet place, with a pretty, almost entirely enclosed little square, Piazza Umberto, giving onto a smallish sandy beach – a little more developed than it once was, but still gloriously peaceful compared to Amalfi.

Ravello

The best views of the coast can be had inland, high above Amalfi in RAVELLO: a renowned spot “closer to the sky than the seashore”, wrote André Gide – with some justifications. Ravello was also an independent republic for a while, and for a time an outpost of the Amalfi city-state. Now it’s not much more than a large village, but its unrivalled location, spread across the top of one of the coast’s mountains, makes it more than worth the thirty-minute bus ride through yhe steeply cultivated terraces up from Amalfi – although, like most of this coast, the charms of Ravello haven’t been recently discovered. D.H. Lawrence wrote some of Lady Chatterley’s Lover here; John Huston filmed his languid movie Beat the Devil in town; and more recently the writer and political polemicists Gore Vidal lived here for many years.

The Duomo

Everything in Ravello revolves around the main Piazza Duomo, where the Duomo, a bright eleventh-century church, renovated in 1786, is dedicated to St Pantaleone, a fourth-century saint whose blood – kept in a chapel on the left-hand side – is supposed to liquefy (like Naple’s San Gennaro and others) once a year on July 27. It’s a richly decorated church, with a pair of twelgth-century bronze doors, cast with 54 scenes of the Passion; inside, there are two monumental thirtheent-century ambones (pulpits), both wonderfully adorned with whit intricate and glittering mosaics. The more elaborate one to the right of the altar, dated 1272, sports dragons and birds on spiral columns supported by six roaring lions, while the one on the left illustrates the story of Jonah and the whale. Downstairs in the crypt the museo (daily 9am-7pm; eur.3) holds the superb bust of Sigilgaita Rufolo and the silver reliquary of St Barbara, alongside a collection of higly decorative, fluid mosaic and marble reliefs from the same era.

Villa Rufolo

Piazza del Duomo- Daily April-Oct 9am-8pm; Nov-March 9am-4pm- eur.5 (089857 621, www.villarufolo.it).
The Rufolos figure on the other side of the square from the Duomo; where various remains of their Villa Rufolo lie scattered among rich gardens overlooking the precipitous coastline. The rambling villa offers some of Ravello’s most ionic views and hosts many of the Ravello Festival’s top events. If the crowds ( best avoided by coming early in the morning) put off you, turn left by the entrance and walk up the steps over the tunnel for the best (free) views over the shore, from where it’s pleasant stroll thought the back end of Ravello to the main square.

The Ravello Festival

Ravello’s annual arts festival (www.ravellofestival.com) dominates the summer months, with performances all over town from the end of June to early September. Concentrating on classical music, dance, film and the visual arts, it makes the most of the town’s settings and attracts an increasingly high level of international performers. From March to October, the Ravello Concer Society (www.ravelloart.org) also hosts several concerts a week in the Anunziata Church.

Villa Cimbrone

Via Santa Chiara 26- Daily 9am-sunset-eur.7 (www.villacimbrone.com)
It’s just a ten-minute walk from the center of Ravello to perhaps its most celebrated sight, the Villa Cimbrone, whose formal gardens spread across the furthest tipo f Ravello’s ridge. Most of the Villa itself is now a luxury hotel, but you can peep into the flower-hung cloister and crypt as you go in. The garden’s are dotted with statues and little temples and lead down to what must be the most gorgeous spot in Ravello – a belvedere that looks over Atrani below and the sea beyond.

Ravello Auditorium

Villa della Repubblica
On the far side of Ravello’s plateau, the Ravello Auditorium is an oddity in Ravello’s otherwise mostly unchanged environment: a sleek, modern, white wave below the crown of the hill, designed by the prolific late Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who was no less than 102 years old when it opened in 2009. It’s not open for tours, but no one will stop you wandering down and peeking into its four hundred-seat theatre space, which is the main venue for the Ravello Festival and more besides.

Salerno

Capital of Campania’s southernmost province, the lively port of SALERNO is much less chaotic than Naples and is well off most travellers’ itineraries, giving it a pleasant relaxed air. During medieval times the town’s medical school was the most eminent in Europe; more recently, it was the site of the Allied landing of September 9, 1943 – a landing that reduced much of the centre to rubble. The subsequent rebuilding has restored neither charm nor efficiency to the town centre, which is an odd mixture of wide, characterless boulevards and a small medieval core full of intriguingly dark corners and alleys. It is, however, a lively, sociable place, with a busy seafront boulevard, plenty of nightlife and shops and a good supply of cheap accommodations, which make it reasonable base for exploring the Amalfi Coast and the ancient site of Paestum to the south. Although there isn’t a great deal to see in Salerno, it’s pleasant to wander through the centre’s vibrant streets, especially the ramshackle old medieval quarter, which starts at the far end of the podestrianized main shopping drag of Corso V. Emanuele.

Pinacoteca Provinciale di Salerno

Via dei Mercanti 63; Tues-Sat 9am-7.45pm- free
Snaking through the heart of Salerno’s old quarter, its main street is the narrow Via Dei Mercanti, which has been spruced up over recent years and is home to the seventeeth-century Palazzo Pinto. Inside the Palazzo is the Pinacoteca Provinciale di Salerno, with half a dozen rooms displaying one or two nice fifteenth-century altarpieces and a couple of works by Carlo Rosa and other Neapolitain Baroque artists.

The Duomo

Via del Duomo- Mon-Sat 10am-6.30pm, Sun 1-6.30pm- free
Off to the right of Via dei Mercanti, up Via del Duomo, the Duomo is Salerno’s highlight, an enormous Church built in 1076 by Robert Guiscard and dedicated to St Matthew. Entrance is through a cool and shady courtyard, built with columns plundered from Paestum, and centring on a gently gurgling fountain set in an equally ancient bowl. In the heavily restored interior, the two elegant mosaic pulpits are the highlight, the one on the left dating from 1173, the other, with its matching paschal candlesticks, a century later. Immediately behind there’s more sumptuous mosaic-work in the screens of the choir, as well as the quietly expressive fifteenth-century tomb of Margaret of Anjou, wife of Charles III of Durazzo, in the left aisle. To the left of the tomb, steps lead down to the polychrome marble crypt , which holds the body of St Matthew himself, brought here in the tenth century.

Museo Diocesano

Largo Plebiscito 12- Daily 9.30am-12.30pm & 3-6.30pm; eur.2 ( www.diocesisalerno.it)
Next door to the cathedral, the main attraction at the Museo Diocesano is a set of 69 ivory panels depicting Biblical scenes from a large eleventh-century altar-front – said to be largest work of its a kind in the world. They’re amazing, minutely crefted pieces, showing everything from Creation and Explulsion from Paradise to the Last Supper – a sort of Biblical comic strip in ivory.

Museo Archeologico Provinciale

Via San Benedetto 26- Tues-Sun 9am-7.30pm, eur.4
Five minutes’ walk from the catgedral, The Museo Archeologico Provinciale occupies two floors of a restored Romanesque place. It’s full of local finds, and has an array of terracotta heads and votive figurines, jewellery, lampsand household objects, from Etruscan as well as Roman times, but its most alluring piece is a sensual Head of Apollo upstairs, a Roman bronze fished from the Gulf of Salerno in the 1930s.

Giardini della Minerva

Via Ferrante Severino 1; Tues-Sun: April-Sept 10am-1pm & 5-8pm; Oct-March 9am-1pm, eur.3 (www.giardinodellaminerva.it).
After the cathedral, Salerno’s most interesting attraction is The Giardini della Minerva on Via Ferrante Severino, a medicinal garden laid out according to medieval medical principles and traversed by channels of tinkling water. It’s a gloriously fragrant place, its shady terraces wonderfully soothing in summer, and there’s even a café serving herbal tea to ensure you leave healthier than when you arrived.