The Amalfi Coast, Italy
- Julie-Anne Justus
- 23 hours ago
- 4 min read
We depart from Rome on our cruise and our first stop is the Amalfi coast.
Here we are at anchor, on the ship, having breakfast with the town of Amalfi in front of us. (You can hear the clink and clank of breakfast utensils.)
The Amalfi coast is south of Rome and south of Naples, the regional capital of Campania. The Sorrentine peninsula juts out into the sea for about 10 km, and small towns and villages lie along the very picturesque, very very steep coastline.
Technically (and you know I like my technicalities), the peninsula is split into two coastlines: the Sorrento Coast and the Amalfi Coast. The Amalfi Coast is the section that begins after Positano and runs down to Salerno. The Sorrento Coast is the opposite section that runs from Positano to Sorrento (towards Naples). But generally it's just referred to as the Amalfi Coast.
Oh, and the Amalfi Coast is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The plan today is to travel by coach from Amalfi through Positano and Sorrento, spend some time in Sorrento, and go back to the ship in Amalfi. I'll summarise the day in two impressions: (1) old towns and terraced gardens clinging to vertiginous cliffs and (2) lemons.
Our coachdriver was a magician. His skill in navigating the extremely narrow switchbacks up and down the steep mountains was supernatural.
The Amalfi Coast has millions of visitors every year, and it's popular with celebrities. In Positano, our guide pointed out homes owned by Sophia Loren and Federico Fellini, and places where Russell Crowe (who recuperated here after filming Gladiator), Mark Zuckerberg, Taylor Swift and others stay. Yawn. But it is very pretty. There's a scenic hiking trail called the Path of the Gods, that offers wonderful views. At a price. Those paths are steep.
Lemons are everywhere. Sorrento lemons are a specific variety of lemon that is native to the Sorrento peninsula. They are large, quite bobbly, very fragrant and very old -- this type of lemon has been grown here for hundreds of years. Their Italian name is sfusato, which means spindle, which refers to their shape. The lemons are grown on terraces on the hillside. The terraces are created using dry stone walls, and are part of the heritage of the region.
This region is the epicentre of lemons and lemon products, particularly limoncello. We saw how limoncello is made (remove rind but not pith, soak in alcohol for 7 days, add sugar, and there you have it) ...
... but lemons are also used in cakes, pastries, gelato, slushies, chocolate, soap, balsamic vinegar and more. I loved one of the regional pastries called sfogliatella. With lemon cream. We had coffee and sfogliatella overlooking the bay of Sorrento and the isle of Capri.
Sorrento is a charming little holiday town with a small local population and lots of holiday accommodation. It's wildly expensive, wildly popular and it looks like it doesn't have a care in the world.
We walked to the Grand Marina, the fishing port at the end of the town, and then back to the central part, and down to the beach. The 'beach', ha. I know a good beach when I see one ... and this one is a grey expanse of stones. The hills are very steep, so we caved in to getting the lift back to the top. (For a fee of €1.20 each.)
Lemons are in food, on clothes, in ceramic design, in paintings, and on tourist paraphernalia like this bag and cap, which two elderly ladies bought and showed off proudly. One of them told me she bought the bag because she's involved in Cat Rescue, which is adorable. I asked them if I could photograph their purchases for my blog. :)
Of course there's gelato. Ken stuck to boring old Baci flavour while I dived into the Sorrento moment and had lemon cream and pistachio.
Amalfi has been around for a long time, since about 300 CE. By 800 CE it was a great maritime republic, like Venice, Pisa and Genoa, trading with the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. Such a great location! Amalfi is famous for (apart from lemons) introducing the maritime law code, the Tavole Amalfitane, although I'm not sure what that's worth now with the despots behaving so badly in the Strait of Hormuz. In the 1100s Amalfi was defeated by the Normans and an earthquake in the 1300s just about finished it off.
But here it is, and here it still clings to that cliff.
Back in Amalfi, we wandered along the esplanade. That's our ship in one of the photos below. What a pity we can't sit next to the sea, watch the world go by, and eat and drink endlessly.
And finally. When I was planning this trip, it dawned on me that that marvellous, famous, bloody Jacobean drama The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster was actually about the Duchess of Amalfi! I don't why I didn't make the connection earlier. Anyway. I still have the copy I used at uni so have brought it with me as a holiday read. Nothing like a stage full of dead characters at the end of the play to entertain one. (Summary: The duchess has two brothers who desire her – yes, incest as well as murder. When she marries someone who is not a nobleman, the brothers' henchman Bosola kills her and the children. Then just about everyone in the play dies too.) The most famous line in the play? Spoken by one of the brothers, which is a bit rich when he's just ordered her murder.
FERDINAND. Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died young.
(There's a marvellous PD James novel called Cover Her Face, if you're not tempted by Webster.)
Next: Trapani, Sicily
This really looks better on a bigger screen. www.julie-anne.online
Comments