AMALFI COAST

Rocky mountains and high cliffs on the Amalfi Coast dominate the sea. Along the coast, small promontories, inlets, deep hollows, strangely shaped and coloured rocks follow one after another. Then there are luxuriant cultivations bearing witness to the perseverance and skill with which countrymen here have worked to grow vegetables on such a rocky ground. Characteristic villages, washed by the sea, are hidden among the green hills of lemons or stretch out like terraces on the Tyrrhenian sea. This is the Amalfi Coast, spectacular and suggestive, at times horrid and imposing, delicate and charming in its beautiful details. It is part of Sorrento peninsula, which stretches itself on the Tyrrhenian sea between the gulfs of Naples an Salerno and raises up with the steep slopes of the Mounts Lattari. These mountains were called by the Romans Lactarius Mons, because it seems that there was plenty of milk provided by the cattle of the area. The ridge steeply slopes down to the sea of Amalfi, and with Mt. Sant'Angelo a Tre Pizzi, 1443 metres high, reaches its highest point. One of the most beautiful and famous roads in ltaly runs along the coast. It turns in and out on a margin so slight that it seems inexistent. It is all cut into the rock and runs high on the sea, following the coast, now crossing a small promontory on which there is one of those towers built against the pirates' raids, then getting into a gorge, in which the sea penetrating as in a fiord, forms clear and charming bays, now climbing down to small beaches situated in a kingdom of peace and silence, now running in narrow and dark tunnels cut into rocky wails steeply sloping down into the waters. The view which this road offers to the tourists is simply enchanting. A blue and shining sea extends towards a boundless horizon, while the rocks and the pure, intense light create fantastic shades of colours. Positano, Amalfi, Ravello, Maiori and all the other villages of the coast appear suddenly as by magic, creating fantastic and amazing perspectives. All these villages seem to have been sculptured on the slopes of mountains by the skilful hand of an artist. In them fishermen and farmers, famous craftsmen who work ceramics, belonging to an ancient race of builders of ships and fishing boats, all lead here a simple life. The people of the coast are enthusiastic and hard working, deeply sincere and natural. They live in a world tied to its traditions and history, a world born out of a happy combination of the South and the East. So Greek and Eastern elements can be found in these villages with their dome shaped roofs, white walls and terraces open on the sea, with their shining majolica floors. They can be found even in its landscape and in the serenity which interrupts and renews the classical joyful melancholy of the South.