Amalfi

Whilst in Vietri, we did one day trip: a ferry ride to the legendary town of Amalfi.

Unlike the large, fast, crowded boats we had taken out to Ischia & Capri, this was a smaller, open-top ferry that held maybe sixty people, hugged the coastline, and called at each of the little towns. We couldn’t have asked for a brighter, more glorious day, and this was a great way to see this legendary coast and each town in a way we hadn’t been able to before. (It was surely better than driving the congested coastal road, which we had tried and failed to do that one day in Sorrento.) Check out some of our photos below.

One of the most fascinating things about this coast, IMHO, is a series of stone towers perched along the cliffs, some thirty in all, apparently at close enough intervals that each is within sight of the next. (The mountaintop beacons of Amon Din come to mind.) They were built to warn and defend against pirate attacks, which apparently were a scourge of this coast for centuries. The towers are still there but sometimes hard to spot, some apparently abandoned and crumbling, some converted to unique residences, and some integrated into walls or other buildings. It became a bit of a game to find them during our cruise. (See if you can spot them in the photos of Vettica Maggiore, Atrani, and Amalfi below. I believe that castle-like home in Maiori was also built around one!)

While some of the little towns had a pier barely big enough for our little boat, Amalfi was a different story: its lengthy wharf was like a crowded city bus station, with ferry boats of various sizes all vying for spots and hundreds of people milling around and queuing in the hot sun, trying to find theirs. On shore, things were no less chaotic: cars and buses choked the road and small parking area in front of the town, and a half dozen tour groups and hundreds of individual tourists flooded the main square and small alleys that extended off of it. Meanwhile, cars and delivery vans would occasionally push through the crowd, since like most of these towns, Amalfi is crammed into a small valley, and there is only a single one-lane road through it shared by both vehicles and pedestrians. This concentration of humanity made us glad we were only here for a few hours! Try to avoid Italy during the summer!

But if Amalfi is perhaps too popular for its own good, it was immediately obvious why: it punches well above its weight. The most obvious example is its church. Presiding over the picturesque main square at the top of a massive staircase, the fabulous Cathedral of Sant’Andrea boasts a gorgeous tiled duomo, a campanile, a cloister, and even a pair of magnificent bronze doors made in Constantinople. This cathedral, begun in the 9th century, seems far too big and grand for such a small town. But that’s because Amalfi was once a much more important place than it is today. For a lovely succinct history, I’m going to borrow liberally here from the blog of travel agency Avanti Italy. (I hope they don’t mind!)

The majestic beauty of the Amalfi Coast has always been irresistible. Roman patricians built seaside villas along the coast and created some of the first settlements. The first document tracing the origin of Amalfi, dating from 596, is a letter written by Pope Gregory I when the town was a defensive point for the Byzantine Duchy of Naples. Taking advantage of a period of unrest in the region, Amalfi declared itself a Republic in 839. This small fishing town was about to take the Mediterranean by storm.

By the time the Republics of Pisa, Genoa and Venice were firmly established, Amalfi traders were already navigating the waters and trading throughout the Mediterranean. At this time the town’s small harbor was full of sailing vessels that crisscrossed the sea, reaching ports as far as Egypt, Syria and Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire. Amalfi had its own gold currency, called the Tarì, which was used in ports throughout the Mediterranean, Africa, the Greek Empire and the East. Amalfi’s influence on the seas is well documented in the…Amalfi Tables, which established a maritime code…used throughout the Mediterranean until 1570.

Amalfi remained a rich and powerful Republic until 1073 Power was shifting in the Mediterranean to the Republics of Pisa and Genoa. Amalfi suffered two damaging attacks by the Pisans in 1135 and again two years later. Despite these setbacks, Amalfi thrived intellectually and creatively during the 12th and 13th centuries. During this period, Amalfi sailors were among the first to introduce the compass for navigational purposes. The town’s impressive Duomo was constructed during this period, including the serene Cloister of Paradise (1268) and the Romanesque-Moorish style Campanile (1180-1276).

Amalfi’s period of prosperity changed drastically in the 14th century when the town succumbed to the plague in 1306 and 1348. The trading economy was all but ruined during a devastating sea storm in 1343 that destroyed the port, sailing ships and much of the town. Amalfi’s days as a major maritime Republic were over, and the town came under the rule of the nearby Kingdom of Naples.

Lacking military and trading influence, the town slowly returned to a sleepy fishing village. By the 19th century travellers from throughout Europe began to rediscover the history and beauty of the Naples area on the Grand Tour. Writers, poets, musicians and painters arriving on the Amalfi Coast were stunned by its natural beauty. The American poet Henry Longfellow arrived in 1869 and later wrote a poem entitled “Amalfi” (1875) inspired by his time in the small fishing village.

A Brief History of the Amalfi Coast, Avanti Italy

And of course, celebrities and tycoons have been coming here ever since, nowadays alongside plenty of other tourists and instragrammers…including us!

After popping into some tourist shops and grabbing a coffee at an old, elegant café in the main square, we toured the beautiful cathedral, including the garden cloister and crypt. Then we headed back out into the heat and followed the press of tourists up the main street, exploring as we went. We found a small but famous fountain, the Fontana Cap è Ciuccio, that for years the Amalfi townspeople have decorated with tiny figurines, creating a magical little grotto complete with bakers, cobblers, minstrels, shepherds, sheep, donkeys, geese, a sailboat, etc. It reminded me of one of those old, romantic European paintings of everyday people going about their daily lives…or a medieval Where’s Waldo. (We found a very similar miniature nativity scene, possibly inspired by this one in Amalfi but much larger and more extensive, back in Vietri, inexplicably set up on the edge of a parking lot near our apartment where no tourists would find it. We even saw people tinkering on it. Some sort of local hobby?)

We just kept going up Amalfi’s main street, until the other tourists petered out and finally disappeared. Most of the shops and restaurants had petered out too. We were well up the little valley now, and instead of a cacophony of voices, the main sound was the rush of water from a small river that had been contained underneath the street. Suddenly we arrived at our destination, the small, adorable Museo della Carta (Paper Museum). But first, some background, again from Avanti Italy:

Thanks to trading connections with the East, by about the 1230s Amalfi became one of the first locations in Europe to produce paper. Sitting at the base of a ravine with a fresh water source running down the Valle dei Mulini (Valley of the Mills), Amalfi was an ideal setting for paper making. Amalfi’s paper was soon sold all over the Mediterranean. Paper making continued as an important local trade throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

A Brief History of the Amalfi Coast, Avanti Italy

The museum is housed in one of the old mills, and on its dark bottom floor, it still has several working water wheels that power the centuries-old paper-making equipment, including a series of hammers that smash the paper pulp—originally made from scraps of fabric—and rollers that flatten it out. We got to see all of these formidable, chunky machines in action, learn about the role of human urine in paper production and how the mill’s watermarks were added, and even dip some screens in a vat of (urine-less) pulp to make our own rather thick and amateur sheets of paper. Outside, I loved seeing the complex system of old mill races that still direct water from the stream under the main street to the water wheels inside. Quite a testament to human ingenuity!

During and after the tour, my sociable wife chatted with an American gentleman and his 10 year-old daughter. Turns out the guy (a large, sweaty, out-of-breath Southerner) was a lawyer, and next thing I knew, Amy had invited him to lunch…and I had the pleasure of spending the next hour hearing about his divorce and his exploits in personal injury law (sigh). He and his daughter were on a whirlwind tour of some of the same places we were visiting, hastily thrown together while he had her for part of the summer. I was reminded again what a bummer it is to try to cram a comprehensive tour of a place like Italy into a 10-14 day vacation—as so many Americans attempt to do. (And as my travel company does with the tours they sell.) It was also a nice reminder of just how lucky we are to be able to slow down and enjoy these places. A rare privilege indeed!