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VIETRI SUL MARE
They all came from the sea, from the sea facing the
beach of Marina di Vietri: the invading vessels of the
Saracens, against which around 1560 the sightting towers
had been built, the tartans and the foreign fleets
devoted to trade. These fleets found an easy landingat
the port of Fuenti, the safest shelter in the Gulf of
Salerno, wanted and equipped by the emperor Frederick II
in the 13th century. The tartans were in the eighteenth
century a button-hole flower of the dockyards devoted to
the construction of boats used in Marina: cargo-ships
with a light hull, an only lateen sail mast which
challenged the Mediterranean while transporting wood,
earthen ware, salt and cheeses.
From the sea again,
from this stretch of coast famous today as a sea resort,
echoes even farer in the past of the old Marcina, come.
As we can read in Strabo, it was "founded by the
Thyrrenians, occupied by the Samnites and situated along
the sea stretch between the Sirenusae and Posidonia". It
was probably a settlement consisting of a main nucleus
and minor settlements by sea ports developed between the
7th and the 4th century b.C.
Greek-Italic amphorae,
earthen ware, bucchero outfits in Vietri Sul Mare in via
Colombo as well as the spas of Roman age dating back to
a period ranging between the Ist century b.C. and the
Ist century a.C., discovered in the locality Bagnara, on
the western shore of the river Bonea, on a stretch that
once separated the beach from the coulisse of the group
of buildings built in the ninenteenth century in the old
part of Marina. The structure showed a circular room
with a niche and was provided with a heated room (the
laconicum) after transformed into a frigidarium with a
basin for immersion baths. The remains of it are
exhibited in two shops of Marina.
But the peculiarity
of this place, when it was found, was that on the spa
another buildind typology had been juxtaposed and it was
linked to the history of Marina and Vietri: a ceramic
factory, so called:"faenzera" becouse of the name of the
faience. An intact ceramic furnace with piled up dishes
and ware and a mountain of discarded pieces, which are
now not distinguishable becouse of the passing of time
and water infiltrations, has been found.
The old
ceramic factories were facing the sandy shore and the
tartans loaded directly on the beach the earthen ware
which were important trade objects.
And just where
the rooms of the ceramic factory at the Bagnara were
found, we have had the biggest presence of production
plants, fostered by the abundance of water, by the
exposition which allowed a perfect drying of clay and by
the depth of water.
Vietri and its Marina are
inevitably linked to the history of ceramic. Already in
the fifteenth century many shops were fully operating,
even if the Etruscans are said to be the beginners of
this art and the Amalfitans are said, in the glorious
period of the Republic, to have melted styles and
eastern influences with coastal suggestions. But we have
to get to the fifteenth century to gather proofs and
documents of a production essentially consisting of
earthen ware and utensils.
In the seventeenth century
a quality jump took place with the introduction of wall
decoration and floor tiles and of aedicules representing
above all images of St. Francis from Paola and St.
Antonio Abate, respectively protector of mariners and
fire, therefore "ceramists".
The "riggiola"
prevails, a floor tile with geometric or leaf patterns,
which were simple or baroque. The nineteenth century was
the period of increase in the production of objects and
furnitures and in their exportation to other regions,
above all Sicily.
Leaving behind us the Two Brothers,
the two cliffs symbol of Vietri, the beach of the
Crestarella, of Marina D'Albori, l'Acqua del Fico which
surround the shore-line of Marina, we cross the narrow
roads of the town to reach the Church of the Madonna
Santa Maria di Portosalvo dating back to the 17° century
or the Madonna dell'Arco, with a majolica floor,
situated on a narrow little road which links Marina to
the highway of the coast road. To go up to Vietri again
you can choose either via Cristoforo Colonbo with smooth
windings which do not allow us to look away from the
sea, where a series of vases, among which one for wine
with a wild pig and two panthers, dating back to the 6°
century were found, or you can descend to St. Anthony,
so called for the sacred building devoted to the Saint,
founded in 1607 on an old pagan temple.
Going along
the steep little road which links Marina with Vietri,
with an eye looking at the coast and the other at the
Valle delle Naiadi with the river Bonea, we reach the
Fortress, today Matteotti Square, a real balcony
overlooking the sea and the coast. It goes back to 851
a.C., when Vietri, the old Veteri (place, old town); was
built on the ashes of the old Marcina, destroyed in 455.
The inhabitants scattered on the territory, came back to
built on the old settlements, and gave shelter to the
Amalfitans rebelling against the Prince Siconorfo.
The
baroque coulisse of the Palazzo della Guardia, recently
restored and used as a seat for exhibitions and
meetings, catches the eye towards a series of eighteenth
century buildings which lie around the square and along
the Corso Umberto: the palaces of the De Simones, of the
Del Platos, of the Punzis. Stuccoes, decorations and
frames are clearly in contrast with the essential
typology of the coastal buildings, but they owe their
presence, in the neighbourhood of Vietri, to piperno,
gravel and travertine pits.
That made it possible,
more than in other centres of the coast, the expression
of an architectural creativity.
The latter can also
be found in in the seventeenth century flourishing
activity of iron processing.
That is why the
buildings of the historical centre show artistic
fan-windows, that is semicircular gratings, which
surmount the main doors of buildings with iron fan or
peacock tail arranged lists.
But the presence of so
many shops and ceramic workshops, with their many
colored panels, full the eyes of whom crosses Corso
Umberto I or stops at Matteotti Square.
Once within
all the families in Vietri there was someone who worked
in a ceramic factory: who worked at the potter's wheel,
who worked as decorator, all of them were waiting before
furnaces as high as houses and which could turn out tens
of thousand pieces. The furnace was lighted on friday
evening: the agreed upon signal was a candle for Saint
Anthony, the master of fire.
The votive ceramic
images, scattered among all the roads of Vietri, with
the typical colours of Vietri ceramic, red, yellow,
"ramina", blue, together with holy water stoups and the
many colored tiles called "riggiole", represent the
typical artistic heritage of the Vietri tradition.
It is by
chasing the blue and yellow majolica roof-tiles of the
dome of the Church of Saint John Baptist, and essential
part of the landscape of Vietri, that we, throught lanes
and courtyards, reach the Ciroppolo quarter, the heart
of the historical centre: the circum oppidum, a circular
place, a labyrinth of houses which was born with the
coming back of fugitives from Marcina.
St. John
Baptist which saw, during centuries the
juxtaposition of restorations of Romanesque, Renaissance
and baroque styles, was built in the 10° century,
destroyed by Saracens and then rebuilt.
Beside the sixteenth
century façade the bell-tower with its octagonal steeple
stands out, and inside, beside a coffered ceiling of the
eighteenth century, a polyptych representing the
Motherhood of the Virgin, dating back to the 16°
century, is preserved. The adjoining Main confraternity
of the Most Holy Annunciata and of the Rosary is
enriched with a majolica floor. An essential part of the
landscape of Vietri is also the ceramic factory planned
and realized by the architect Paolo Soleri in 1954.
Situated
against the rocky wall of the road leading to the
Madonna of the Angels, with its wavy outline covered
with wedges of coloured clay, it stands out on Matteotti
square. The inside is helical shaped and allows to
enclose all processing cyclers, as on an immense
production stage.
The nearest hamlet to Vietri sul
Mare, Molina, develops below the level of the Highway
nr. 18 leading to Cava de' Tirreni and above it the one
light bridge built in 1564 by Rainaldo del Lamberto on
Ribeira's commission viceroy of Naples, rises. The
hamlet was founded in 1080, but probably, in a foregoing
time, it gave shelter to a nucleus of inhabitants from
Marcina who took refuge inside. In the 13° century,
thanks to the existence of precious mills which could
avail themselves of the waters of the torrents which
from the Mountain Finestra and Pietrasanta fed the river
Bonea, it assumed the name of Casale Molinae.
The
original aspect of the village was seriously compromised
by the flood occurred in 1954, but the pillars of an
aqueduct built in 1320 still remain.
Claudia della Corte
The thread that links the hill to the sea
In the villa immersed into the green of the hills of
Raito, once belonging to the Embassador Raffaele
Guariglia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the
Government of Badoglio, there are traces of an active
participation into the historical events which
characterized the history of our Republic: it was the
seat of the Allied National Commission of National
Control, the day after the Allies' landing and was
chosen as his residence, by the king of Italy Vittorio
Emanuele III°, from August 1944 to april 1945. Today the
group of buildings, composed by the villa, the turret
and the park, is a property of the Province of Salerno,
thanks to the bequest of the Ambassador. Exhibitions and
meetings are held there and it is also the seat of the
Study Centre Raffaele Guariglia.
This villa
was originally a rural house bought in the eighteenth
century and then restored by the Guariglia family. By
crossing the gate situated on the country road leading to
Raito, we walk along a long terraced avenue which leads to
the Belvedere facing the villa, used for the concerts held
during the summer. The building consists of two floors and
thirty-six rooms rich in works of art, porcelains and silver
ware. The library contains over four thousand volumes. The
white turret standing out in the park houses the Museum of
Ceramic. The exhibition is divided into three sectors
covering a period of time ranging betwen the eighteenth and
the twentieth century. In the first sector many colored
devotional terra cottas and holy water stoups are exhibited,
in the second sector objects for domestic use such as jugs,
tureens, trays, lining and floor tiles are preserved, in the
third sector the works of the so called "German period" of
the ceramic of Vietri ranging from the Twenties to the
Fourties, are preserved. The rich artistic inventiveness
that we find in these works is expressed by the scenes of
daily life, the foreshortenings of villages, the cribs, the
animals among which is to remember the famous little ass
symbol of the ceramic of Vietri, made a precious work of art
by famous ceramists like Dolker, Kowaliska, Thewalt Hannasch
who innovated the style and the decoration of the
artisanship from Vietri. A section of the Museum is devoted
to Guido Gambone, an artist from Vietri who is now famous
all over the world.
From the higher entrance of the Villa
we can enter the quarter of San Vito, on the hill
called Trocle, in the heart of Raito Vietri sul Mare, where
the Chapel devoted to the Saint is built with an altar
enriched with a ceramic frontal. An only long road divides
the houses crowded together on the hill and it is cut by
staircase flights, courtyards, lanes which juxtapose
themselves, run through by winds and enlightened by the sun
which makes the white of walls blinding. The origin of Raito
dates back to the 5° - 6° century and its inhabitants are
linked to the sea by their whole lives spent on vessels. A
chapel dating back to 1727, within the Church of Saint Maria
delle Grazie, enriched with frescoes of the school of
Solimena is called Mountain of the Mariners. The Parish
Church dates back to 1540. On its façade there are two
ceramic panels representing Saint Peter and Saint Paul,
while the inside with three aisles and dominated by a dome,
melts the Romanesque and the baroque styles.
From the
locality Turino we can start an itinerary indicated
by the italian Alpine Club (CAI) which leads to the Mountain
Avvocata and to the Sanctuary founded in the sixteenth
century, of which some remains are still visible. A little
far from it there is the cave in which, according to
tradition, the Madonna appeared. She is celebrated on the
fiftieth day after Easter. Then we go through the lane which
crosses the New Chapel and then, at the end of a slope, we
reach the Old Chapel. After a false plane we first encounter
a slope leading to the Acqua Fredda stream and then, through
the Pass of Sella Terminale, we reach the top of the
mountain and the area where the Sanctuary lies. From the
belvedere it is possible to take in the whole Coast.
Setting
out the main road towards Raito again, we reach Albori,
an intact village at the feet of the Mountain Falerio. We do
not know if the main mast of the ships or if a water spring
called Albola, originated the name of this hamlet which was
probably founded by the fugitive of the sacked and destroyed
Marcina.
Albori consists of the perimetre of the little
square facing the Church of Saint Margherita from Antiochia,
built in the sixteenth century with three aisles decorated
with stuccoes and frescoes and a Congregation with ceramic
linings. The tolls of its bell resound among the little
lanes, the staircases, the walls of live stone, besides the
domes. It is a place where you can stop and loose yourself,
and then to face the climbing up the Falerio Mountain which
overlooks the village. From the little Capodimuro square,
along a route which grazes old rural houses and the remains
of an old furnace used to cook lime, we reach the spring
"Acqua del Cesare" surrounded by a wood and by a
Mediterranean bush. After we have reached the pass
underlying the Mountain, we can choose the lane winding up
to the top of the Falerio Mountain from which we can
overlook the Gulf of Salerno or that leading to the Old
Chapel and inserting into the first stretch of the High Via
of the Lattari Mountains which goes from the Old Chat to the
Chiunzi Pass.
The valley of Albori is rich in a thick
coppice and in rare botanic species such as the "pinguicola
hictifolia", a carnivorus plant which links the hill to the
sea looks like the long staircase which from Raito leads to
Marina d'Albori (the sea-shore of Albori) and to the little
inlets enclosed by the rocks, overlooked by the sighting
tower. The vegetation and perfumes of the Mediterranean bush
accompany the rhythm of the descent along old stairs, along
the heart of the valley up the sea and to the crouching
sandy shores.
The last hilly hamlets which frame
Vietri sul Mare are Benincasa and Dragonea,
lying between trees and terraces. Benincasa is linked to the
devotion for St. Francis from Paola who probably stayed on
these hills and whose image is preserved in the Church of
the Madonna Delle Grazie. There are many ceramic aedicules
scattered along the roads of the village as an evidence of
the strong link initing all the inhabitants of the hamlets
of Vietri, that is the link of the enamel and the brick.
Dragonea probably owes its name to the fact that it is
situated beyond the river Bonea. The hamlet is divided into
the villages of Vallone, Iaconti and
Padovani where there is the Church dating back to the
II° century, devoted to Saint Vincent. In the annexed
convent the canon Gaetano Foresio, scholar of botanic
founded, in 1867, a school of agricolture and a silk-worm
culture. Now the fruit of his work is preserved in the Badia
of Cava de' Tirreni. The Church of Saint Peter Apostle was
founded in Longobard times, but it was completely destroyed
and with the reconstruction work the original plant got
lost. From the hamlet Padovani we slope down along a lane,
into the deep valley of the Bonea river and then we reach
the caves of Saint Cesareo, where it is possible to see the
remains of an ecclesiastical building built in front of the
cave inhabited by the saint.
From Dragonea, the place
where the Prince Romualdo Guarna II° in 1100 practiced
pigeon hunting as a tower of the time witnesses, we can
follow an old lane leading to Cappella Nuova and then to the
spring of Capod'acqua. All lanes and mule-tracks linking the
hilly hamlets to the High Road of the Lattari Mountains
represented, in the past, when the carriageable coastal road
did not yet exist, the only means of connection, and it was
carefully preserved by man who created dry small walls and
support sleepers to avoid landslides.
Claudia della Corte
CETARA - MAIORI - MINORI
Going to discover the gold of lemons
The procession on Saint Peter's day on june
29° in Cetara, is a particularly evocative rite which above
all celebrates the vital relationship of this fishers'
village, with the sea, either by birth or by vocation. A
slow procession, nearly following a dance rhythm, leads the
statue of the saint up to the beach where it meets every
kind of typical local boats such as the tunny-fishing ones
which crowd the sheet of water in front of the port,
dominated by the sighting tower. Fireworks illuminate the
water and the houses which climb up the flanks of a narrow
deep valley.
It is the name of Cetara itself, coming from
the Latin word "Cetaria", tunny-fishing boat, which marks
the destiny of a village, home of the typical Mediterranean
"blue" fish like anchovies and tunny. Fried, stewed, salted
anchovied packed in traditional brick vases have created a
real cookery legend represented by the drain liquid coming
out from the wooden stave barrels, where salted anchovies
are preserved. This liquid, after it is filtered, becomes an
exceptional seasoning for pasta and vegetables. The sea has
inexorably influenced the destiny of Cetara since its
origins: it was the cause of its economic fortune but also
of invasions and destructions. In 879 it was occupied by the
Saracens who established themselves there, in order to avail
themselves with an useful oupost for their raids in the Gulf
of Salerno.
On the other hand the nearby Bay of Fuenti
represented a precious landing and refuge place for the
galleys. After it was annexed to the Republic of Amalfi,
Cetara was the last eastern dominion able to perform a
function of control and signalling of possible enemy raids.
As an
evidence of the golden age of the Sea Republic, beside Saint
Peter's Church, with its majolica dome, there is the
bell-tower dating back to the 13° century, with mullioned
windows and an octagonal bell culminating with a cone
steeple. The village began to decay when it was assaulted by
the Turkish army of Sinan Bassà, called by the Prince of
Salerno, Ferdinando Sanseverino rebelling against Charles V.
The
Turks exterminated all people who did not want to submit to
the Sanseverinos and over three hundred inhabitants of
Cetara were enslaved. Then, under the control of the Abbey
of Cava de' Tirreni, Cetara was its port and trading outlet
until 1833.
Going up again along the sea road we
encounter Saint Francis' Church, dating back to the 17°
century. Beside it there is an old Convent of Franciscan
monks. The inside with an only aisle, preserved frescoes by
Marco Benincasa. Among them, in the vault there is the image
of Suor Orsola Benincasa, a nun from Cetara, lived between
the sixteenth and seventeenth century. On the external
façade, on the entrance door, the Immaculate Conception is
represented.
Entering and going through Via Imbrice we go
up towards the Plane of Viesco, a place from which we can
enjoy a wide and charming landscape. A little further we
encounter the spring "Reggiulella". Walking further we
reach, following the lay-out of the High Via dei Lattari
mountains, traced by the CAI (Italian Alpine Club), the lane
which from the Amalfi highway, near Erchie, among woods of
holm oaks and chestnut-trees, leads to the Sanctuary of the
Avvocata. Going back to the coast road which divides Cetara
in two parts, we found ourselves immersed in a convergence
between two deep valleys: the Soverano valley and Saint
Nicholas' valley. Here, overlooking the sea, Erchie
is situated. The village owes its origin to the Benedictine
Abbey of Saint Maria de Erchi founded in 980 and suppressed
in 1451. Pergolas of vines and lemons soften a rocky and
rough landscape. The tower rising from the sea divides the
shore-line into two beaches, which are very much frequented
seaside and touristic destinations.
Coming back to the coast we leave behind us the
landscape of Salerno and of its shore-line until Licosa
Point, to follow the curves outlined by the flanks of the
Piano mountain. Once we have doubled the Point of Cape
Tummolo we reach Capo D'Orso, a mountain range
agitated by peaks and rocky projections which precipitates
into the sea, so marking the boundary line between the
valley of Cava de' Tirreni and that of Tramonti. If you go
through the lane which leads to the lighthouse, your sight
can range on one side until Point Campanella and the isle of
Capri and on the other side towards Salerno and the Sele
Valley. Here the rock and the Mediterranean bush took
possession of the territory again. There are many dolomitic
walls with aiguilles crowded with holm oaks and arbutuses.
Along this coast stretch rich in inlets with little beaches
of cobblestones and caves, on April 28° 1528 a bloody ship
battle between the fleet of Filippo Doria and that of
Charles V took place. It ended with the victory of the French-Genoeses.
In order
to go away from the "noise" of the battle and rest our eyes
and mind after a look without limits besides the precipice,
we can take refuge in the Catacombs of Badia, clung to the
rock, just under the spectacular range which from the
Finestra Mountain slopes down to Capo d'Orso. We find
ourselves in front of the remains of a Benedictine Abbey
dating back to the eleventh century, transformed, on its
external side, into a house built on a former rupestrial
church which two hermit monks had devoted to Saint Maria de
Oearia.
A magnificient bouganvillea hides three cult
juxtaposed places, which during the centuries underwent
continuous alteration and changes. Either the crypt or the
main Chapel and that of Saint Nicholas are rich in frescoes,
dating back to the 12° century which witness the existence of a cult
perpetuated by monks whose tombstones are still preserved.
Among the rocks rooms characterized by vaults and porticus
appear: it is a total immersion in an austere and silent
atmosphere, with the sun-light and blue of the sky which
penetrate from the openings and enliven the faces of the
sacred figures decorating the vaults and the walls.
After
we have got over the Cape, where the remains of the Tower of
Badia stand, a lane leads to the rocky dungeon called "The
man riding a horse", characterized by three rocky peaks
over 50 metres high. Going further along the lane towards
east, we reach the Mountain Piano from which we can enjoy an
enchanting landscape. As we approach the "Reginna Maior" we
feel to be wrapped, curve, after curve, by terraces of
lemon's trees, fruits of the old union between the sea and
the sky. The intense perfume of the citrus fruits, the
stretch of soft sand of the shore and behind it the Valley
of Tramonti, recalls us the past, before the flood occurred
in 54' which swept the heart of Maiori away and
before the gone mad waters of the torrent flooded it.
This coastal
town never had an easy life. Sacked in the 9° century by the
duke of Benevento: Sicardo, after, even if it was under the
government of the Republic of Amalfi, it was invaded by the
Pisans. Contested for its strategic position, it was
fortified with walls and towers, of which there are only
remains (Castle of Saint Nicolò de Toro Piano, the walls of
the rampart of Saint Sebastian, the Tower of the Saracens
and the Tower of Milo al Casale). To the name of Maiori that
of "Royal Town (Città Regia)" was added thanks to Philip IV.
it was a feud of the Sanseverinos, of the Colonnas and of
the Piccolominis who built the fifteenth century castle with
cylinder towers so called of Saint Francis.
Its different historical fortunes are witnessed by the portals,
the stems and the courtyards representing the oldest nucleus
of the town all developing around the Church of Saint Maria
a Mare rising on the Mountain Torina, which can be reached
by going up along the course of the river.
The majolica
dome of the church with its bright flashes makes the
landscape of the town precious. Built in the 12° centur it
underwent a series of changes between the seventeenth and
the nineteenth century. On the central altar there is a many
colored sculpture dating back to the 15° century
representing a Madonna with Child, which according to
tradition was taken from the sea. The three aisle church is
enriched with a coffered ceiling dating back to the
sixteenth century. Many works of art are preserved in the
Museum of the Collegiate Church, set up in the crypt (18°
century): an alabaster polyptyc dating back to the fifteenth
century the Box of the Imbriachis dating back to the
sixteenth century a collection of old illuminated codes and
precious pontifical furnitures.
It is always the course
of the river which leads us, after having crossed the
quarter of Saint Peter, to the Sanctuary of Saint Maria
delle Grazie, of Medieval origin. The façade and the
bell-tower date back to the eighteenth century while the
inside is frescoed with paintings dating back to the
fourteenth - sixteenth century.
From Maiori, along the
routes indicated by the Italian Alpine Club (CAI), it is
possible to reach the Sanctuary of the Avvocata, either from
via Casa Imperato Superiore through the locality of San
Vito, or from another locality Vecita. Only a hill hides
Minori from the eyesight, but before reaching it we have
to get over Saint Francis' church which, devastated by the
Turks in 1435, was rebuilt thanks to Bernardino from Siena.
In
the annexed convent Rossellini took an episode of his film
"Paisà". Just beside it there are the Cave of the
Annunciata with a little lake of fresh water and the remains
of a religious building devoted to the Virgin of the
Soccorso dating back to the 14° century and frescoed.
Along
the short and crouching arch of the Seafront of Minori, the
lions of the fountain dating back to the 12° century guard
the memories of one of the oldest sites of the coast.
At
the outlet of the valley of the Reginuolo the town shared
with Maiori its function as dockyard of Amalfi. In the 13°
century it was given the title of Civitas, but already in
987 it was Bishop's seat becouse it preserved the relics of
Saint Trofimena, protector of the Amalfitan people.
According to tradition the founding of the Saint's mortal
remains, occurred in the half of the 7° century on the
beach, caused the moving of the inhabityants of the hilly
area of Forcella towards the sea, where they founded a
village around the church. It lost its original Romanesque
structure after the restoration carried out in the
eighteenth century. In the central aisle we can admire the
big altar-piece of the Crucifixion by Marco Pino from Siena.
But the heart of the Basilica is represented by the crypt
dating back to the 19° century where in an alabaster urn,
there are the relics of the Patron saint and a precious
Crucifix. From the church the rites linked to the Holy Week
start with a procession of the so called "men beating
themselves" (for expiation) accompanied by chants and
litanies. At the time of its submission to the Republic of
Amalfi, during the medieval period, this town possessed a
dockyard, it was landing place of many merchant ships. The
cultivation of citrons and lemons, which still today
represent the main resource of Minori economy was already
flourishing since the 10° century and thanks to the
abundance of water coming from the valley the establishment
of mills and olive pressed was fostered. Besides flour the
town became famous aroung the 16° century for the handmade
pasta.
In the middle of the valley, a few steps from the sea,
the remains of a splendid maritime Villa, the only evidence
along the whole Amalfitan coast of the Imperial age, were
discovered in 1932 and then buried again by the flood
occurred in 1954. The Villa was built in the ist century
a.C.: it probably extended itself up to the terraces lying
along the flank of the slope, and stretched out to the right
river-side of the Reginna Maior.
On the lower floor there is a viridarium and
in the middle of it there is a basin surrounded by a
triporch, the triclinium-nymphaeus, around which the whole
ground-floor, enriched with a mosaic floor, develops. A hall
with a barrel vault, a whole thermal system, stuccoes,
mosaics and remains of frescoes represent one of the
characterizing elements of that which can be considered one
of the most important Roman monuments in the area of
Salerno. In the Antiquarium, on the higher floor, precious
remains are exhibited, included the ones found during the
works of regimen setting of the river.
Claudia della Corte
In the heart of the Lattari Mountains:
TRAMONTI
A carpet of narcyssusses, cyclamens and
violets makes it pleasant to walk and milds the dark shadows
of the chestnut trees. At the extreme end of the lane sweet
smelling hawthorn and elder shrubs accompany the climbing to
the mountain you can take in the whole plane of Sarno at a
glance with the Vesuvius up to Naples and its gulf.
Here,
beyond the mountais, there are scattered villages, each of
them clinging at the bell-tower of the main church, the
dungeon is on the pass against the invaders, orchards and
gardens are in service of the farmhouses, terraces and
terraces of lemons and vines climb up to the thick chestnut
trees that are age-old. They are the same ones from which
the first inhabitants, a group of Roman refugees having
found shelter in the Lattari Mountains between 500 and 550
a.C., took the wood for their houses; they are the same
chest-nut trees used by the Amalfitans to build their solid
ships. As a homage to the allied Tramonti, the former
Latin Triventum, always touched by the cold currents of the
Chiunzi Pass, the mariners of the old Republic baptizen the
northern wind of the compass-card, the "Tramontana" (north
wind). The wood industry is still today one of the most
important economic sources of this place, together with the
artisanship of the "cufanari", that is of the basket masters
of Corsano, Figlino and Cesarano,
famous all over the world for their skill in interlacing the
soft branches and the striped cut bark of the chest-nut
trees. They produce various shaped baskets (so called
"sporte", "spaselle") similar to those produced in the 12°
century.
Potters are by now completely disappeared. Once
they were able to create vases and dishes "more beautiful
than those produced in Faenza", a so powerful community that
it gave the name to the village of Figlino (from "figulini"
= potters), where escaping the iconoclast anger, the
basilian monks took refuge and then they built there a
hospital and a church. Of the Byzantine Annunciata church
the apse wall with frescoes and a Pantacreator Christ
sitting on the throne are still visible, while of the
fourteenth century Saint Peter only the walls remain. In the
eighteenth century the sacred building acquired a baroque
style, decorated with stuccoes of Vaccari's school and
refined majolicas from Capodimonte. At Ferriera and Pucara
two out of the eighteen paper factories which were situated
between Maiori and Tramonti, before the flood occurred in
1954 and the propping of rivers and torrents, still survive.
The historical fulling-mill of Pucara, skillfully restored,
is visited by the most sensitive italian painters who only
here find a duly hand made paper, fit for emphasizing
temperas and water-colours. On the contrary there is to
register a stop in the iron art tradition. Out of the "iron
masters" who produced the famous "centrelle", that is the
little iron nails fit for the mountaineers' shoes, only one
is still living in Ferriera, the river locality which in
december is the charming background of the poetic living
crib. It is a habit, probably introduced by the humble
disciples of the Poor Man from Assisi who, in Polvica,
deep immersed into the luxurian vegetation of the Hill of
Saint Mary, built a convent in 1474. Of the original nucleus
with the church looking at east and devoted to the first
martyr of the Christendom, St. Stephen, a few remains are
visible. The present building group of Saint Francis with
the annexed religious building and the mystical cloister
date back, on the contrary, to 1710. It was a golden age for
spiritual life in Tramonti. In this period the Conservatorio
(convent-school) of Saint Joseph and Teresa, born in Pucara
as school for young noble ladies according to the will of
the nobleman Francesco Antonio Ricca (1662), plays a
fundamental role, and not only from a religious point of
view: marriages and vocations, mostly caused by political
and family reasons, were stipulated within monastic walls
which have laid down the law in these cases until the first
years of the twentieth century. Even as regards cooking
monasteries were famous, because the delicious Cucierto, the
so called liquor with herbs and barley was invented by the
pastry cook nuns of Saint Joseph and Teresa, as well as the
"sweet aubergine", ancestor of the "aubergine with
chocolate", and the pizza with rice and spelt, a varied
version of the famous Neapolitan pastiera. Today the
Conservatorio can be visited only in occasion of the Lemon
Festival which takes place during the first week of the
month of August. August is the month of the return to one's
own country, of feasts and square meals. With the dog-days,
because of the Feast of Pizza, there is the great return of
the pizza cooks: an army of about three thousand people from
Tramonti who, from the period just after the Second World
War have been planting their little greedy flags all over
the northern Italy. The real home of pizza, they say with
pride, is Tramonti not Naples. The confirmation of this
comes from the historian of the gastronomy of the Coast of
Amalfi, Ezio Falcone, who, when he remembers the bread with
seasoning (pane et condimentum) of the first inhabitants of
the Lattari mountains (a kind of flat bread covered with
salted lard, basil or rosemary and cheese, still consumed
today on November 2°), quotes a certain Raffaele Esposito so
called "Naso 'e cane" (Dog's nose), perhaps coming from
Minori who, in 1889 used the mozzarella cheese from Tramonti
instead of seasoned cheese to offer it to the queen
Marghetita of Savoy. Kingly mozzarella, then, that made from
the very precious milk of the mythical cows bread on the
Lattari mountains; a rare breed, bound to exctinction like
its sister from Agerola - for its survival politicians,
breeders and environmentalist are fighting, because it
represent the real economic richness of this town and the
opportunity for it to be in the first positions as regards
the dairy product sector.
The range of dairy products
produced by the so many little and medium sized farms
scattered among the thirteen hamlets is large: caciocavallo,
fiordilatte, provola, scamorza, latticello in the rush,
butter little ricotta (that is the main ingredient of that
sweet masterpiece represented by the sfogliatella Santa Rosa
of Conca), prepared with traditional methods and cares. They
are millenary, since that they date back to the Romans who
populated this country, (the Roman remains of a Roman Villa
discovered in Polvica witness that) and guessed how unique
were the aromas of the herbs growing in those rich pastures.
They can still be found untouched in the delicate milk
goat's cheese prepared by the shepherds of the 21° century
with the same method used one thousand and five hundred
years ago: the rennet poured into special wicker containers
(so called "fascelle") in order to separate whey from
rennet, the pieces placed on boards on which salt has been
spread over in fresh and shaded places. They are boards
still today preserved in farm-houses, typologically equal to
those of old times, even if they are now provided with all
comforts.
They are planned according to the medieval model
with a stable on the ground floor, the pigsties for pigs in
the orchards. Thirteen different quality of grapes exist, to
which as many villages correspond: the white ones called
Falanghina, Ginestrella, Bianca Zita, Bianca Tenera and
Capranesca, the red ones called: Sciascinosa, Tintore,
Strepparossa, Pellecchione, Olivella, Zaccarina, the 70 per
cent is sold, the remaining part is processed to produce
wine which is famous all over the world with the
denomination of controlled origin "Coast of Amalfi",
territory of Tramonti.
Campinola, Capitignano,
Cesarano, Corsano, Figlino, Gete, Novella, Patierno,
Sant'Arcangelo and Paterno, Sant'Elia, Pietre, Polvica,
Ponte, Pucara:
Thirteen oases of peace among the
"rhythms of Rimini" in Maiori and the cold worldly pleasure
in Ravello at the two extremes of the territory of Tramonti.
Thirteen isles linked to each other by a thin plot of lanes
and "short cut" paths, of little roads and
mule-tracks. Among the suggested walks from Pendolo di Gete
leads to Novella. The starting points is where the torrent
Caro flows into the omonymous deep valley, after the obliged
stage at the Cave of the Angel og Gete with the charming
rupestrian chapel dating back to the 12°-13° century. It is
a full immersion in the history and then we are ready for
our environment tour: luxurian vineyards and green citrus
plantations, the gold of lemons in competition with that of
the brooms, the eastern like style bell-tower of Saint
Erasmus of Pucara and Maiori unusually clung to two hilly
sides sloping down towards to the sea. Going up again there
is Casa Vitagliano, wholly black with its Mediterranean
roofs, Patierno S. Elia with its terraces, Patierno
Sant'Arcangelo with the Romanesque church of the Ascension,
symbol of Tramonti, and the tender aedicule of the Madonna
of the Pietà, Capitignano and Polvica and, as the final
goal, the nice little square of Sant'Antonio a Novella.
For
whom wants to get lost again, it is possible to enter the
network of mountain paths, perhaps he can also stop at an
ice-cream shop to taste the not easily to be found
"spumone", the receipt of which has been handed down from
father to son: a "faction" wholly from Tramonti, founded by
the master ice-cream makers of Capitigliano.
From this
village the name of which evokes the saga of the Roman
fugitives and, from the likewise Latin Cesarano, niche of
the relics of Saint Trifone preserved in the very old church
of the Assumption, start the paths along the Vena San Marco
and Cerreto Mountain, clearly shown by the map of the Pro
Loco (Local Tourist Board). For the courageous ones, at
last, we suggest the eighteenth-nineteenth century journey
along the Coast of Amalfi through the "road of the Cava".
From the Chiancolella and Torina di Gete mule-tracks branch
off: they, passing over the springs of the Fontanelle and of
the Ricciarello reach Cava dei Tirreni, to the Finestra
Mountain and to the Abbey of Cava (Badia).
At this point
the green side of the Avvocata, protector against the traps
of the brigands and patron of both the people from Cava and
from the coast says good-bye to the Coast of Amalfi.
Erminia Pellecchia AMALFI -
ATRANI - CONCA DEI MARINI - FURORE -
PRAIANO The footsteps of the Doges
The origins of Amalfi are wrapped in legend.
According to the Chronicon Amalfitanum dating back to the
13° century the birth of the Amalfitan population is due to
the epical adventure of a group of Romans families which, at
the times of the Emperor Constantine, being bound for
Costantinopople, were surprised by a violent tempest and
after various excursions they hided themselves in a well
protected and rich in water place. To the places which gave
them a providential shelter they gave the names of Amalfi
and Atranum. But the year to which it is possible to date
back the first historical events of that which was the
richest Sea Republic among the other four ones (the others
are Pisa, Genoa and Venice) is 839. On that date the
Republic, after a sack against Salerno and the Longobard
princes, was proclaimed independent. From then on a period
of great splendour began, thanks to the trades which made
Amalfi a cosmopolitan centre famous all over the
Mediterranean. The evidences can still be seen among the old
lanes and rich churches, through the stratifications of the
population which dominated the political scene of the town.
Longobards, Normans and Saracens alternated until 1137, when
Amalfi was sacked by its rivals, the Pisans, and then it did
not come back anymore to the old splendour which it had
lived during the three foregoing centuries. This rivalry is
evey year revived by the four Sea Republics during the
evocative "historical regatta".
An ideal itinerary cannot
start but from the Dockyards, where the famous galleys were
built with over one hundred oars and were destined to the
rich trades with the East. Then bigger and ships,
commissioned by rich English and French shipowners, were
built.
A few steps far from the Dockyarfs there is the
Cathedral devoted to Saint Andrew which dominates the square
at the top of a steep staircase. Built in the II° century,
it was enlarged in 987 and then it was restored in 1203
according to the Arab-Norman style. The Gothic atrium is
decorated with white and black marble strips and is
transversally divided into two aisles by columns.
In the
nearbyn cloiser of the Paradise the Arabic like influences
are emphasized, thanks to the little twin columns supporting
ogive and interlaced arches which frame the little palm
garden. But to fully understand the historical importance
reached by Amalfi to the utmost of its splendour, we should
visit the historical palace Morelli, that is today the seat
of the town administration. Here the so called "Tabula
Amalphitana" is exhibited, the first code of Navigation Law:
a total of 66 laws. After we have got over the Town Hall we
reach the Tower to admire the view of the sea. Presently it
is part of the building group of the Hotel Luna (but is
possible to visit it), where Ibsen in 1879 wrote "Dollies'
House". Going on towards Salerno, we reach the
characteristic village of Atrani, where once the doges of
Amalfi were crowned and buried. It is a village of crib like
houses, so that many people say that Escher's
"metamorphoses" were born here. And perhaps it is true,
since that the Dutch painter stayed there between the
Twenties and the Thirties of the just elapsed century, so
that this village became its obsession-inspiration. A visit
deserves the Collegiate Church of Saint Maria della
Maddalena, built in 1274 in a dominating position
overlooking the gulf. With a baroque façade, inside it
preserved precious paintings by Andrea da Salerno and
Giovanni Angelo D'Amato.
If you want to visit the place
where the Doges were crowned, you have to get to the chapel
of Saint Salvatore di Bireto (from the name of the dogal
cap) a little above the small and characteristic square
Umberto I°.
But the most evocative and less known
itinerary is that so called "of the villages".
Passed over Amalfi, directed to Sorrento, just after the
first tunnel, on the right you have to turn into a little
road leading up to the hamlet of Agerola. The tortuous
route, from Medieval times and nearly until the beginning of
the twentieth century represented the main connection
thoroughfare between the town centre of Amalfi and the
hamlets of Pastena, Lone, Vettica and
Tovere.
Its historical importance, the landscape
and the nice churches which, along the route stand out among
the characteristic vault houses, make it a cultural heritage
of very high level, even if is unknown to most of the
people. The sight of Amalfi, while slowly we go on along the
slope, is peerlessly beautiful.
The first church we
encounter along the route is that of the Madonna del Carmine
which, according to the popular tradiction still much
believed in these places, was destroyed by a flood and then
it was soon rebuilt becouse the statue of the Madonna was
found intact in a miraculous way. For this reason this
locality is called Pino (from the italian name pine).
Soon after we reach the first village: Pastena. The name
probably derives from "pastinato", a kind of contract which
noblemen and the clergy imposed upon their colons. On the
sides of the road a series of farm houses, which give the
landscape a kind of temporal immobility can be admired; as
it is like being plunged into the agrestial silence and
peace of other times.
Stair after stair we get over the
staircases and looking up we can see the church and the
bell-tower of Saint Mary the Virgin and on the left the
slope to Lone. Farm Houses which are gathered around a
belvedere called "a' ponte 'e Lone", from which, as if we
are suspended in the void, you can enjoy a splendid
landscape of the sea and the coast. On the right as a fan
the typical steep mountains of Agerola appear, only
interrupted by lemon and vine terraces. Coming back to the
highway we reach Conca dei Marini. The village runs
along the coast for about tree kilometres and stretches
itself up to 400 metres of hight above the sea-level. Conca
is divided into two parts: the shore where until the last
century the highest number of boats of the whole coast
concentrated itself and the high part where presently the
most of population lives. The old village consist of little
houses grazing the sea which some years ago were touched by
a landslide the signs of which are still visible today.
The atmosphere of Marina seems to carry us in the past, to
the last century, which revives on August 5° every year when
Saint Maria della Neve is celebrated in the little chapel on
the beach devoted to her. Near the highway there is, in the
votive offerings of the mariners escaped from tempests and
once famous for their daring and courage, are preserved.
It
is really a reason of pride for the people from Conca to
belong to a stock which in old times was known all over the
Mediterranean as an invincible one, notwithstanding the
risks and dangers the fate scattered along the seven seas.
It is better to visit Conca in the west direction, by
walking through the so called "walk of the five essences":
vines, lemons, olive-trees, locust-trees and pomegranates.
You have to start from the cathedral devoted to Saint
Anthony up to the church of Saint Michael on the edge of
ravines and precipices and our eyes get lost into the fiord
of Furore.
To immerse oneself into the deep valley
it is better to descend the 200 stairs which start from the
highway nr. 163 or to arrive there in a boat. It is formed
by a deep cut into the mountain which is behind Praiano,
excavated during the centuries by the torrent which comes
down precipitating from the plateau of Agerola. A few
houses, repaired by the rock gorges, recently restored to
their original charm, face a picturesque little beach.
It
is a village which looks like a crib, a village become
famous all over the world for having been elected as an
ideal place by the famous cinematographic couple: Anna
Magnani and Roberto Rossellini.
In the high part of
Furore it is to visit the church of Saint Elia, dating back
to the 13° century where a tryptic by the painter Angelo
Antonello de Capua, representing, perhaps, one of the most
precious pictorial works of the whole the Amalfi coast, is
preserved.
But if you want to choose a different route
to visit the high grounds which dominate Conca dei Marini,
you can go through the lane "of the crow's nests" leading to Agerola,
dominated by the remains of the castle Lauretano. Here there
is the most charming belvedere in the whole province of
Salerno. If you prefer, on the contrary, the comfortable
highway to reach Agerola and Pogerola, you have to turn on
the right, soon after Amalfi, in the direction og Positano.
You reach Pogerola where the houses with their steep and
slope roofs appear to be picturesque and singular. When you
have arrived at the hamlet of Saint Lazzaro, where the only
camping of the Amalfi Coast exists, after the little church,
you go down to Punta and from a magnificient natural balcony
you can see a landscape which ranges from the famous
isolated crags in the sea of Capri called "faraglioni", to
the mountains of Cilento.
But for the real champions (or for
whom really feels himself like that) there is also an
alternative: to go down by bycicle. The distance to cover is
13 kilometres long with 650 metres of descent. At the end
there is a monument devoted to Fausto Coppi. When you have
arrived there, you can really understand how tiring was was
for the "champion of champions" to run through this stretch
during differents tours of Italy.
Going back to the
highway before reaching Praiano, you can visit the
Emertald Cave by going down a long staircase or using a
lift. The cavity in which the light acquires a green shade
by filtering through the natural opening of the cave, was
discovered in 1932 and has got a height of 24 metres.
Stalactites and stalagmites give life to a mysterious and
charming architecture. Praiano lies on the range which
descends from the mountain Saint Angelo a Tre Pizzi until
Sottile Cape.
In the middle of the built-up area there is the
Parish Church of Saint Luca which preserved a big silver
bust of the Saint. The inside with threes aisles is enriched
with paintings by Giovanni Bernardo Lama and by many sacred
furnitures. A fishers' village, Praiano, touristic resort,
stretches itself on the sea through a deep valley with high
and steep walls, to which little houses of the inlet of the
Marina di Praia, which can be reached through a
little road excavated in the rock, oppose themselves.
After having got over the Sottile Cape and short gallery on
the highway, you have before your eyes the many colored
majolica lined dome of the Church of Saint Gennaro, the
symbol of Vettica Maggiore. From the wide square
before it, you can look towards the coast until Campanella
Point.
Adolfo Pappalardo
RAVELLO - SCALA
Gore Vidal arrived here in 1948 in a jeep driven by
Tennessee Williams who drove "like a dog". It was love at
first sight, he never went far from Ravello anymore.
He used to live in Ravello six mounths a year, in the refuge
of the Rondinaia, the golden prison of the unhappy Virginia
Grimthorpe. The American writer is the last one of a long
series of travellers "in love with beauty" and subjugated by
the atmosphere of a village where the Mediterranean
architectures match with the northern mists of an alpine
landscape, sweetened by the perfumes and the colours of
enchanted gardens.
"While contemplating from those
Armida's orchards, among the roses and the hydrangeas, that
magic sea in which the blue colour of a very limpid sky is
reflected, the wish of being able to fly comes out",
Ferdinand Gregorovius wrote, with reference to the Belvedere
of the Cimbrone. Undiscussed protagonist of the Grand Tour,
he was among the reckless ones who arrived, through the
inacessible road of Castiglione, to Ravello. Visitors of all
over Europe. Particularly English people, in the wake of the
landscape painter William Turner, came here.
It is a very
long list: Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Forster, Keynes,
Strackey, Lawrence...the whole group of Bloomsbury, moved,
with their paper and pen, to the radical artistic coterie of
Villa Cimbrone, at the court of Ernes William Beckett. The
eccentric Lord Grimthorpe, with the help of Nicola Mansi,
tailor-barber-builder from Ravello, created the monument of
"eclecticism"
Here everything is excess: from
the seemingly wild nature of the gardens, which on the other
hand are scanned in their linear geometries of an "ideal
town" as a homage to the purest Renaissance, to the
architectures. They are literally copied from the local
ones-a prototype is the adjoining concent of Saint Francis,
founded, perhaps, by the Poor Man from Assisi in person-or
from models from their far land like a Cistercial Abbey in
the Yorkshire.
Villa Rufolo is quite different, cold and
haughty, conscious of its millenary origin. It is the
multicoloured background of the musical festival, which
every year in july welcomes, in the "magic garden of
Klingsor", which so much impressed Wagner, orchestras and
directors famous all over the world.
In the half of the
ninenteenth century the Scottish botanic Francis Neville
Reid reshaped the "wonderful" garden of Landolfo Ruffolo,
celebrated by Boccaccio in his Decameron, with the
well-chosen inclusion of exotic essences and the bent for
gardening of Luigi Cicalese, who also was the first
photographer and editor of cards of Ravello. The palace,
emphasized by a square tower, is a mine of Moresque
architecture: phantastic ornates, spiral little columns,
arches, colonnades, Turkish baths, basins, rotundas,
courtyards, cloisters, fruit of the inspiration of skilled
Arabic workers, the same ones who worked in churches and
noble residences of the medieval Ravello. The colour plays
are extraordinary: indigo, red, yellow, colour spots which
burst into the dark grey of the stone. The fresco recently
found in the "waiting room" of Villa Rufolo, together with
the graffiti applied on the mosaic walls of the Cathedral of
the Assumption, memorial chapel of the relics of the Patron
Pantaleone, witness that.
The Cathedral, deprived of its
pronaos, after the restoration carried out in the eighteenth
century, does not keep so much of the aspect it had when it
was built in 1086 according to Orso Papirio's will, who was
the first Bishop of the diocesi of Ravello, to which the
Pope Vittore III° had given the independence. Its original
magnifience is witnessed by the bronze door dating back to
1179, a work by Barisano from Trani, which has 54 carved
panels representing stories of the Passion, saints and two
masks, and the bell-tower with mullioned windows and tufa
and brick decorations.
The surprise is the inside with
three aisles and the two refined ambos with Christian
symbologies mixed with figure patterns which seem to be
inspired by the kufic letters of the Arab mosques.
Mystically evocative is the chapel of Saint Pantaleon, which
is casked of the blood shed by the martyr of Nicomedia, and
which as a miracle melts, each year, on july 27°, on the
anniversary of the Saint's beheading, so attracting crowds
of incredulous people and believers. For the art lovers, the
crypt is an obliged destination which houses the diocesan
Museum where important works of art, such as sculptures,
architectural fragments and goldsmith's works are preserved.
The Cathedral Square, with its comfortable bars and gay
souvernir shops, invites to linger, to gossip, to quiet
conversations. It is a pleasant temptation. It is to savour
it, if you want to fully understand the heart of Ravello. We
can now follow the example of Palmiro Togliatti, the
historical father of the italian Left Party who during his
rare holidays in the intimacy of the Hotel Rufolo, used to
daily walk through the easy lane of Saint Barbara which from
the convent of the Clarisse leads to the medieval village of
the saints Cosma and Damiano running along the promontory of
the Cimbrone. It is a "landscape for poor people", nearly
stolen from the exclusive Rondinaia of the Grimthorpes:
ruperstrial caves, olive-trees and age-old ferns, citrus
trees...Abruptly a foreshortening of blue, immobile as a
photogram in the viewer: the seashore of Atrani
characterized with a magnificent sky-line effect by the
towers of Civita and of the Ziro. Togliatti's walk is only
one of the so many itineraries between nature and art, of
the so many roads to be run through until getting oneself
lost in an infinite dream.
But, as in each good
labyrinth, we come inexorably back to the starting point:
the square, a scenographic urban pretence of the Thirties,
traced in order to give a heart to this fortress-town, which
protrudes itself as a sentry overlooking the sea from the
top of the rocky buttress which separates the deep valleys
of the Dragone and the Reginna.
Of the warrior Ravello,
hostile to Amalfi and docile to the flatteries of Ruggiero
il Normanno (it is supposed that the name of Ravello derives
from the word Rebello, rebel) an arch defended by two
ramparts guarding the enemy Scala, remains. It is one of the
surviving doors of the original town walls and it is called
of the Lacco, like the facing sixteenth century little
church of Saint Mary, in memory of the moat which occupied
the space of the present square devoted to Andrea Mansi. The
historical entrance introduces the truest Ravello, that of
the tunnel like lanes suffocated between buildings and
chapels. The Lacco is the boundary point between the popular
quarters and the wordly pleasures of the "promenade des
hotels": the alternative is to go on up the mountains
Brusara and Sambuco or to go to the memorial Chapel of the
Fallen, the old Saint Adiutore church of the barefooted
Hermit Fathers of Saint Augustin who built a convent beside
it. It is useless saying that it is now a hotel, as it is
the case of the most part of the coenobia. Saint Francis and
Saint Chiara are an excetion today, because they are still
inhabited by piuous guests: the aristocratic and educated
monks preserve a very interesting library, the nuns,
enclosed in their cloister rigidly observe the rule. Only
the church, where a precious Byzantine fresco of Christ
Pantacreator and artistic reliquaries can be visited by
secular people.
The mountain excursion both start from
the little square Mansi. You can go to the mountain Brusara,
with its "castrum" of Fratta, fortress against the Pisans,
by climbing the steep staircases of the quarter of Saint
Martin which derives its name from the Romanesque "Paris"
church characterized by the peculiar steeple bell-tower.
The monastery of Saint Nicola a Sambuco on the contrary, can
be reached through the roads Casa Rossa and of the Rotonda
characterized by the omonymous Byzantine church.
For the
laziest ones there is the classical promenade, that of the
hotels. At Villa Episcopio Helen of Savoy spent her last
days as a queen, while Jacqueline Kennedy tried to escape
from photoreporters. Then it is possible to admire Palace
Cortese, Palace Confalone with its atrium, a masterpiece of
geometric symmetry, the courtyard Mansi which still
preserves a Roman bath in good conditions, Palace Sasso,
Palace D'Afflitto with the important entrance door decorated
with the architectural remains of the church of Saint
Eustachio from Scala, Palace Grisone in which we find part
of the church of Saint Margherita and the ruins of the old
door of the Toro.
The epicentrum is Saint Giovanni del
Toro (1018), with its spectacular basilica plant with three
aisles supported by eigh granite columns which frame the
important ambo by Alfano from Termoli.
From St. Giovanni
del Toro to Fontana Square, entering the romantic raod of
Saint Margherita you can follow the footsteps of Escher, who
just in Ravello meet his wife. Footsteps unfortunately made
misted by the progress: the large Rimembranze avenue has
taken the place of the historical route which led to the
Madonna of the Hospital, which in the Middle Ages gave
shelter to pilgrims, where the Dutch painter spent hours and
hours while working at his "Metamorphoses".
A
dive into the casbah of the bazars of via Roma in order that
after we can reach Saint Maria a Gradillo, the religious
building in which the Heads of the Town met; from some
decennia it has been chosen as seat of art events. Not far
from it there is Palace Della Marra, which with its remains
with beautiful barrel vaults and the particular band
decoration ornating floors and windows, functions as
triumphal arch to the present Ravello, hardly hiding the
magnifience of the square of the Cathedral. The calmness of
Via Episcopio invites to a sentimental journey. To lead us
in this journey there are two little cupolas of the
Annunciata, the basilica given by the king Ladislao to the
believers Fusco and today become a beautiful meeting room of
the European University Centre for the Cultural Heritage.
The flight of stairs leads to the Saint Maria delle
Grazie-today still called by the common people with its
original name of Saint Matthew-among walls speckled with
herbs and torn by prospect foreshortenings on that Levant
segment that Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, on
August 15°, at night is enlightened by hundreds of gone mad
fires. From the Annunciata, with a little deviation, we can
reconstruct the incredible puzzle of sacred buildings which
follow each other without interruption, neglected or
desecrated, abandoned or revived to a new life. Some are
original, like Saint Pietro della Costa, rebuilt at the half
of the eighteenth century, probably on the ruins of a church
fallen down in the 10° century, from which perhaps the
granite columns supporting the atrium come. Some are secret,
like Saint Giovanni alla Costa, adorned with the contemprary
scratches by Mimmo Paladino and forbidden to the eyes of the
curious people.
A labyrinth of old square: Scala and its squares.
Vescovado, Minuta, Pontone, Campidoglio, Campoleone, Santa
Caterina, six jewels of art set among the mountains of
Gragnano, Agerola, Ravello, six visible nucleuses of an
invisible town concentrated around the ideal forum
represented by the cathedral of Saint Lawrence. Of the
primitive Cama of Picean origin, of the Roman settlement
dating back to the 4° century, of the medieval legendary
town walls, ten kilometers of extension on nearly one
thousand metres of difference in level between the Castle
and the Pianello, of the invincible manor-houses of the big
Scala and Scalella (the little one), of the strong
houses-towers, of the monumental entrance doors, of the very
rich religious buildings, today very few remains exist.
Infinitesimal fragments, to be looked for among paths and
fields, tool stores and dry walls, courtyards and cellars.
To go in search of remains is the favourite sport of the
Danish, adoptive inhabitants of Scalea, from when in 1910
Carlo Wunstolt bought the ruins of Saint Cataldo,
transforming it into a "house of the artists" for his
countrymen. From the convent of Campoleone the benedictine
itinerary starts from. The abbey of the Saints Benedict and
Scolastica (the oldest one on the whole coast) at Tavernata,
in the high valley of the Canneto, between Pontone and
Pogerola, the coenobium of the Saints Giuliano and Marciano
on the top the mountain Cerbelliano, a coup d'oeil sight on
the gulfs of Salerno and Naples, which takes one's breath
away, Saint Maria de Aquabona on the top of the cathedral
near the very panoramic Lama di Priso, Saint Helen under the
Mountain Aureo, in the neighbourhood of the Amalfitan
quarter of Pianello, Saint Maria de Fontanella a Priegi in
the valley of the Dragone: six monasteries which complete
the pious image of the town with its one hundred and thirty
churches, an autonomous diocese since 994.
Disappeared
monasteries, their furnitures have been stolen or
transferred, like the big statue of the Madonna of the
Rosary, coming from Saint Cataldo and inherited by the
Redemptorius nuns, a miraculous effigy like the Crucifix of
Saint Helen, venerated in the luminous gothic crypy of Saint
Lawrence. The deposition, which can be dated not so long
after the second half of the 13° century, is among the most
important wooden monuments in southern Italy. It is only one
of the so many artistic treasures of the age-old cathedral.
Among them all, it is to remember the extraordinary bishop's
mitre weaved with pearls, gold and enamels, given, as it is
narrated, by the king Charles I° D'Angiò, as a votive
offering to the patron of Scala who had saved him from the
furies of the sea and from those, more to be feared, of the
Saracens. In the crypt again, it is to be admired the
precious many colored stucco sepulchre, attributed to the
school of Tino da Camaino and built by Antonio Coppola for
his adored wife Marinella Rufolo. He was from Scala and she
was from Ravello, they were both patricians and were forced
to stipulate their marriage contract, in order to ratify the
nth armistice between the two towns eternally enemies of
each other. Their story is celebrated each May-Day with a
historical procession, medieval games and a final banquet,
perfectly reconstructed by the scenes of the "Legend of
Saint Nicholas", the most famous cycle of frescoes of Saint
Maria di Minuta.
The cathedral, scanned by three very
high apses and flanked on one side by the bishop's palace
and on the other side by the massive bell-tower has been,
since its reconstruction probably made on a preexisting
church, the spiritual and urban centre of Scala. The square
of the squares. The church-square, with the austere size of
the façade "of the gryphons", toned down by the frivolus
windows of the subportico of the Capitol and by the gay
phantasmagory of the pensile gardens of the Town Hall, is a
natural stage. Boccascena, piazza del Campo, is the old
bench of the noblemen, with the eighteenth century basin
caressed by the trees; as a corridor, the long Tigli avenue
leading to largo Monastero, the official entrance door to
the town. From this door in the far 1725, a Neapolitan
priest, ill in his body and spirit, set off, his destination
was the monastery of Saint Maria dei Monti, in the heart of
the Lattari Mountains, spiritual fortress of the silent
village of Saint Catherine: a group of houses, a little
apart there is the parish church devoted to the saint from
Alexandria and fellow-patron of Scala, with its rustic
church-square, its squat bell-tower with big glasses and
mullioned windows, in the little right apse there is the
icon of Saint Maria della Porta, a bit of Byzantium among
the rude shepherds. From the Marian vision in the cave of
the Revelations to the spiritual conversation with the as
much visionary Sister Maria Celeste Crostarosa: so the
Orders of the Redemptorist nuns and the Congregation of the
Missionary Fathers, here founded in Scala by Saint Alfonso
Maria de' Liguori, were born. Within the limited perimetre
of via Torricella the itinerary linked to Saint Alfonso
Maria de' Liguori develops. At largo Monastero there is the
Protomonastery of the Most Holy Redemptor situated in the
former convent-school of the Zitelle at palace Della Mura,
first house of the Visitandine nuns and then of the
Redemptorist nuns, the very loved "arlequin nuns" dressed
with red and light blue dresses. In front of it there is the
nice Convent of the Liguorini, built in 1932, also having
the function of an oratory. In the chapel, after that the
monastery had become a mountain refuge, there is the statue
of Saint Maria dei Monti, before which the lawyer saint had
prayed. Further, in the neighbourhood of the palace-shrine
Mansi D'Amelio, with its eighteenth century façade, a
balcony on the "card" of Ravello, has got a fourteenth
century passage-way and courtyard, a staircase usually
closed by a gate, descending to the church of Saint Alfonso,
very original, because its background is the cave of the
Marian apparitions. Adjacent to it is the hospitium of the
Redemptorist nuns, the first house of the Liguorini monks
who moved after to Casa Anastasio between Municipio square
and the Capitol: a kind of five star hotel for clergymen,
with the future prospect of also becoming guest-quarters for
laymen. Speaking again about saints, Scala can boast itself
for having been the birthplace of Brother Gerardo Sasso -
recent studies confuted the thesis according to which the
Blessed was from Provence. He founded the Order of the
Knights Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem. In the
crypt of Saint Peter in Campoleone, patronate of the Traras,
a family which competed with the Saxos for the town
government, there is a painting representing a knight from
Malta which witnesses what above said. The sacred building
preserves important works of art of the fourteenth century,
among which there are the statue of Saint Michael Archangel,
a present og Paul de Saxo, the basrelief of Saint Catherine
and the big tombstone with the effigy of 14 personages of
the powerful family. The neighbouring domus of the Sassos
and the Traras document the architectural typology of the
houses-towers of Scala, fortresses provided with all
comforts, very modern "bathrooms" included, which imitated
the Arab ones, with pipes, basins, arches, little cupola
flute and cross vaults, and showed off tarsias. It is one of
the so many surprises of the medieval town. Another Arab
bathroom still well preserved, is on the promontory of
Pontone, in the "quarters of the noblemen", a town in the
town, constitued by "palaces with marble ornaments and
works, with columns and stones of different colours", the
remains of which emerge in the nowadays houses of the
quarter. The area is dominated by the imposing ruins of the
Basilica of Saint Eustachio, temple of the aristocrats
D'Afflitto, who dated back their origins to the Roman martyr
and who, as a homage to him, had built, vertically on the
Dragon, a church as majestic as the Cathedral of Monreale.
It was surely more charming for the verticality of the walls
suspended as the crow flies, between the sky and the sea and
for the magnifience of the decorations with superb chromatic
plays. Of the latter ones a light-but nonetheless moving
glow remains in the apse walls, in the crypt, in the columns
and in the mosaics which have survived, dump witnesses of
the unexplicable decline of a monument considered by
scholars among the most beautiful ones in southern Italy. It
has been the fortune of many other religious buildings in
the village-museum of Pontone, which has been for decennia
prey of the raids of "antiquity researchers": for example
Saint Matthew, more known as Saint Filippo Neri, from the
10° century patronage of the De Bonitos, its Byzantine like
structures have been fallen down, still standing out is the
independent bell-tower, which is the oldest of the coast, a
prisma like tower bare with plasters which resounds that of
San Gimignano; the Bishop's Palace, behind the apses of
Saint Pilippo, an isolated mullioned window and some tarsias
as a memory of the elegant portico, Saint Stefania
documented since 1144 as the most flourishing church in the
State of Amalfi. It is no wonder why. Paontone, commercial
and artisan centre of the village, with its famous wool art
workshops, was the most prosperous village of Scala and rich
artisans of the "wool school" had wanted to embellish it in
a spectacular way. Today this land is starting point for the
excursions leading to the Ferriere, habitat of the
Woodcardia radicans, a splendid example of preglacial flora,
and to the romantic tower of the Ziro with the circular
crenellated town walls vertically on the gulf. Little woods,
thin olive-groves, golden lemon trees, grey dry walls from
which vigorous vine shoots stretch out, old irrigation
channels which lick the narrow lanes, stone steps and
staircase, farm-houses scattered in the green, rupestrial
churches like Saint Maria del Carmine with its little
atrium, abrupt sea foreshortenings after the shadows of the
subways sottoruas accompany our steps. And then the peace of
the little square, which is solar, spontaneus, ingenuous. A
slice of Paradice enclosed in an handkerchief of houses, the
balcony on the valley of the Canneto and on the Castle, the
white sunshades of the modest little bar moved by the
breeze, the hospitable portico of the Romanesque Saint John
with its stucco peacock shaped ornates, the bell-tower
riding the little road to Saint Mary, the majolica "Italian
style" clock, not far from it there is the palace of Filippo
Spina, the brave leader who in order to expiate his sins
wanted its tombstone placed at the entrance of the church,
so that everyone had to tread upon it.
The
spontaneous charm of Pontone is opposed to the softness of
Minuta, "the cultured square"., meant as it the case today,
for art and show events. It is a necessary choise for the
Belvedere of Scala with a privileged view on the promontory
of the Cimbrone, the ruins of Saint Eustachio, the gorges of
Atrani and Amalfi separated by the rocky side of the
Mountain Aureo, the white little village of Pogerola, the
kaleidoscope of the waters kissed by the sun, the romantic
via Favara. Then the façade, a real jewel of the Most Holy
Annunciata, the town parliament, the most superb evidence of
the skill of the local artisan: austere, cosy, solemn, with
a portico with three symmetric arcades, twelve granite
columns, six for each section in which the inside is divided
by them, the high bare central apse, nobilitated by two
columns leaned to the piers of the triumphal arch, an only
mullioned window creates the unique light and shade of the
room, the embroidery of the frescoes of the high medieval
crypt. Without façade is on the contrary the twin church of
the Annunciata of Campidoglio, along the road leading to the
chestnut tree woods, which represent the main economic
source of Scala, and to Punta d'Aglio, going along the
Acquacciola, a green telescope pointed towards the valleys
of the Dragone and of the Mills with the oneiric vision of
ruined paper factories, in the air the smell of saltness,
the outlines of Paestum and Licosa Point clearly visible on
shining days. Among the few artistic emergences of the
hamlet, together with the franciscan church of Saint
Giovanni Dell'Acqua, there is the "square of music". The
concert of bells of the ochre bell-tower of Saint Mary in a
melody which can be compared, as the experts say, to angels'
singing.
Erminia Pellecchia
POSITANO
A museum of the journey en plein air
Trasgressor and Franciscan, fashionable and popular,
hospitable and suspicious. The double face of Positano, with
its thousand contradictions and ambiguities which won the
restless artists of the first years of the 20° century.
Travelling around the world in search of emotions, they at
last found them on the coast of the Syrens, in the little
fishers' village with its lime whitewashed houses clinging
to the rock, its East sweet-smelling gardens, its shore
illuminated by thousands of fire-flies. On the Big Beach the
Church of the Assumption lies with its cupolas sparkling
with its yellow and blue majolica chips and the Byzantine
Black Madonna on the many colored altar. And then, lanes and
little roads up to Fontanavecchia, Santa Maria del Castello,
Monte Sant'Angelo with the oneiric villages of Montepertuso
and Nocelle along the exceptional belvedere among the clouds
which is the Gods' Path (Sentiero degli Dei), the
extraordinary sunsets of Campanella Point consecrated to
Athena.
The first ones to arrive here were
the Russian, then the Dutch came, "a heterogeneous, free,
eccentric and thoughtless group united by and wine", escaped
from the ill-omened forerunners of the Nazism. "Voluntary
prisoners of this mythologic scenary", Sigfried Kracauer
wrote in Positano between 1923 and 1928 with the other
creators of the School of Frankfurt, Walter Benjamin, Alfred
Sohn-Rethel, Ernst Bloch, Theodor W. Adorno. Their meeting
point was for all of them the Buca di Bacco on the Big
Beach, a modest cellar on the sea-shore, bound to become,
during the Fifties, the rendez-vous for the Roman and
Neapolitan people loving the wordly pleasures. The album of
the Buca di Bacco is a wonderful memory archive, the
starting point for an itinerary of Positano based on the
personages and the families which have contributed to create
its myth. They have made this village a real "museum of the
journey" on the Coast of Amalfi, an en plein air
museum-redesigned today by the scholar and art critician
Massimo Bignardi-trought the places and houses inhabited by
the personages which represented the "imaginary of a
century". Kurt Kraemer, the paralytic painter, replaced the
name of the cellar of Salvatore Rispoli, Flavio Gioia Cafè,
(the people from Positano sustain that the inventor of the
compass was their towns-man) with that of Buca di Bacco
(Bacchus' hole). Kraemer, arrived at Positano with his
friend, the painter Karl Sohn Rethel, stayed in a flat in
the house of the Savino brothers where presently there is
the Hotel Covo dei Saraceni. Within their group, there were
Bruno Marquardt, who painted only sea beds, those marvellous
ones of the inlets of Positano, rich in black, violet and
rose sea-urchins, and Stephan Andres, exile with all his
family in "this hiding place on the margins of history". The
antifashist writer decided to live in the last but one house
before the cemetery, on a steep rock, near the "reflected
town" with its white chapel accumulated each on the other
and the narrow lanes steep like the Positano of the alive
people. In the Historical cemetery his daughter Mechthild,
dead from typhus when she was only nine years old, is
buried. Foreign tombs there are beside those of the local
people: Massine's father, Sèmenev, Ivan Zagoruiko, Essad Bey
who was buried with his feet directed towards Mecca. But the
myth of a healthy and wild land, far from the "noisy beauty"
of Capri started from the end of the nineteenth century,
when the Neapolitan painters Vincenzo Caprile and Francesco
Mancini, called Lord, settled in Positano. Paul Klee got
there on foot coming from Sorrento. It was 1902, as struck
by lightning he fell in love with this town and stayed at
the Inn Roma: "it is impossible to leave from here", he
noted down in his diary. In the inn-hotel of Donna Celeste,
consisting only of five rooms, simple but comfortable, the
Swiss poet Gilbert Clavel stayed in 1909. He was impressed
by a swim at the beach of Furnillo (Fornillo) and the
sight of the remains of the sixteenth century square
sighting tower. He bought it in order to built a monument to
immortality, since he was affected with phtisis. He himself
drew out the restoration plan, the futurist Fortunato Depero
designed the furniture which was absolutely in the van. And
at the inn Roma again, Gennaro Favai, arrived between 1923
and 1924. In his drawings and water colours he represented
the quiet rhythms of the town, the harmony of the landscape
broked up by towers and bell-towers, by churches built on
the rocks: Saint Giacomo a Liparlati, Saint Margherita
a Furnillo, in the quarter where the bread for Roman
patricians was cooked (some remains of an imperial villa can
be seen on the little square), Saint Caterina a Punta
Reginella, the New Church (Chiesa Nuova), on the top of the
village Saint Maria delle Grazie a Montepertuso and the
Cathedral. Mostly popular buildings, the Most Holy Assunta
was part of a very powerful abbey already existing in the
second century. There are churches and chapels built as
votive offerrings against the menaces overhanging a people
of peasants and fisher (the old basrelief of the "hunting
fox" on the bell-tower of the Assumption Church symbolically
represents the relation between the two crafts). A perennial
struggle for survival. Natural calamities, Saracen raids,
brigands, the only escape can be found in the Virgin, the
Two Marys, that of the sea come from the East who baptized
the locality with the cry:"posa posa" (that means:"put
put"); the other, a mountain one winner over Lucipher, the
enormous "pertuso" (taht means hole) in the rock was
excavated by Her saint forefinger when She drove away the
devil for ever.
They are pious legends beside which there
are the secular ones: the bloody syrens with their bird
shaped body, the spectre of the doge Mansone appearing from
the high tower of the Big Cock, the apparitions, in the
first hours of the morning, of the ghost of Giovanni
Zagouriko at Reginella Poin. The quarter, very little
and nice, became famous for the artist who stayed there.
There, just after the war, Massimo Campigli rented a room.
While the German Gunther Studemann-an important presence in
the tale of Positano together with Richard Dölker and Lisel
Oppel took refuge in Casa Albertina. Ceramist-painters went
to and from Vietri sul Mare and Positano. It also won Irene
Kowaliska, author of the Renaissance of the ceramic from
Vietri, she moved to Villa Sette Venti with the writer Armin
Teophil Wegner. Irene devoted herself to cloth painting and
perhaps her so much coloured batiks caused the birth of that
economic phenomenon represented by the Positano fashion,
which exploded, headlong from the beginning of the Fifties.
Musicians, of course, could not be indifferent to the charm
of the siren of the coast of Amalfi. The first one was Igor
Strawinsky who got over his tubercolosis in the sun of
Positano and then he started to compose again; the last one
is Roman Vlad. These silent places which invite to
contemplation, and where it is easy to find inspiration,
enchanted the German musician Wilhelm Kempf, who in 1954 had
a villa at measure built at the Sponda, a tiny house, bare
of furniture, occupied only by his loved piano. The tinsels
were useless, because the major ornament was the view of the
sea, that which impressed so much Oscar Kokoschka, who for
her generous guest realized the "paper" "For the house of
Orpheus in Positano". It was hidden from the world,
sheltered by the mountain and the clean terraced garden as
the japanese ones which Kempff adored. No excess, no
concession to colour, as if he wanted to evoche the
chromatic alternating keys of the piano. Now the garden is
jealously preserved by his spiritual heir, Annette Von
Bodecker, and it is open to the young who come here to
specialize at the Orpheus Foundation. A few, very well
selected guest are admitted to enter it. For strangers the
only rare occasion to enter is the concert held at the end
of june by the students of the musical foundation. In the
capital of art dance could not fail. Djaghilev fell in love
with Positano at the beginning of the 20° century. He was an
ingenious concert-manager, director of the fabulous Russian
Ballets. From Moskow the étoile Leonid Massine came here,
after his friend Pablo Picasso. He was so fond of it that he
decided to buy the isle of Li Galli to built there,
on the remains of an old Roman villa, redesigned by Le
Corbusier, his inviolable house-studio. The three islets of
the archipelago of the Sirenuse were bought with a very few
money, thanks to the intercession of another passional and
very pratical Russian, adored by all fishers for his
unrestrained drinks: Michail Sèmenov. Misha had bought the
lands of the little valley of the Romam Mill, behind the
beach of Arienzo, enjoyng himself in botanic, with the
insertion in the Mediterranean bush, of exotic essences. If
it is a legend or not, however he is said to have been the
one who transplanted the palm, today a characteristic
element of the landscape of Positano, among the rocks of
this sea village. In the wake of Massine Antony Tudor,
Margot Fonteyn, John Cranko, Carla Fracci and Beppe
Menegatti arrived at Positano. Massine's dream was that of
realizing a temple of dance by instituting summer courses
and by using it as a scenery for his ballets. But for
reasons of space he preferred to use the large terrace of
Stella Romana, the villa of the Polish couple Szenwic where,
among the distinguished guests, there was even the future
Pope John Paul II. Massine did not succeed in completing his
project: after his death, the villa was abandoned, until
when Rudolf Nureyev gave it back to its original splendour.
The dancer-choreographer came to know of the existence of
the isles of the sirens in 1984 when he received the Award
Positano "Leonide Massine" for the art of dance (this event
has been repeated every year since 1969 without any
interruption, on the first Saturday of each September on the
Big Beach). Attracted by the unavoidable charm of that
strange house with its enormous glass windows, like "a
space-ship landed on an unknown planet", so Raffaele La
Capria, another habitué of this place, comments, he decided
to took possession of those cliffs. Today they are in the
hands of a group of managers and are opened to the public
only for special events. For the common people it is
possible a rapid glance at it and the circumnavigation, with
the complicity of nice "pirates" who ferry the tourists for
the discovery of beaches, inlets and very nice little
creeks.
Erminia Pellecchia
Saints and cooking in Amalfi Coast
Since dawn the whiffs of the ragout spread out along little
staircases, lanes, orchards, terraces, from the high of
Saint Maria del Bando down to the little square of Atrani.
At six, the pestering sound of the bells has started the
celebrations of Saint Maria Maddalena, inviting the
housewifes to the inevitable horribly early rising due to
the long preparation times of the so many "little cocuzza
stuffed cylinders" to be distributed to relatives and
friends. On july 22° there is no other better way than that
of honouring the Saint patron at table, before the dainty
"sarchiaspone", which perhaps is even empty like that of the
Shepherds' Cantata from which it takes its name, but it is
the ideal container for the rich stuffing of minced meat and
cheeses, made even more precious by pouring on it a steaming
sauce which constitutes its gluttonous heart.
Saints and
cooking: a binomial which often occurs on the Coast of
Amalfi where the faith is a pretext to devote at least one
day a year to rest, better if with a cheerful company with
which to share food and wine. Carnival Day for Furore is the
feast for excellence, the rites of which, in a bizzarre
mixture of sacred and profane, already from january 17°
start. This day is the birthday of Saint Antonio Abate,
saint patron of fire and swines. And just they, the pigs,
will be sacrificed on the altar of gluttony as protagonist
of the sumptuous banquet of good-bye to winter:
black-pudding of buckwheat stuffed with "noglie" and
"pezzente" (sausages made not with the best meat of the
pork), pork's blood bucatini, sausages, cutlets,
"sopressate" sausages, ham. The whole is washed with the
Paradise nectar of the "good wine hills", those of Furore,
Ravello and Tramonti which constitute the golden triangle of
the Controlled Origin wine "Coast of Amalfi". As dessert
there is a phantasy of scamorza cheese, smoked provola
cheese, fiordilatte cheese, little ricotta cheese and goat's
milk little cheese coming from the nearby Agerola, from
Scala, and from Tramonti. Real niche products, the taste of
which is emphasized by the good quality of a milk made
fragrant by the herbs of the Lattari Mountains, the
therapeutical virtues of which are known from old times.
It
is a robust cuisine, that of Furore, the most resistant
stomach-proof. But digestion is guaranteed. At the end of
the meal the ideal remedy is a little glass of "nanassino",
a strong elixir which skilful hands took from the pulpy
prickly pears which dominate the rough landscape of this
mountain village. Sweet, energetic liquor, created, it is
said, in the magic alembics of the community of heretics
who, in the Middle Ages took refuge in the woods of Furore.
Or, more certainly, it is a cloister production, as its
cousin the liquor "cuncierto", with a basis of barley and
balsamic vegetables, distilled by the nuns of Pucara. Both
appreciated by the most demanding palates, they have been,
during the last years, emarginated by the rapidly increasing
fashion of "limoncello", rosolio obtained from the yellow
peels of the "sfusato" lemon of the coast Amalfi, which is
the basical ingredient of a great part of the coast cuisine.
The coast cuisine is not only linked to sweets. Cakes,
babas, profiteroles and lemon "delights" surely deserve an
honour mention, but an irresistible attraction for the
gastronomes are surely the first and the second courses
"seasoned" with the golden citrus fruit taken from the Arabs
in order to convert the wild promontories vertical on the
sea in flourishing Allah's gardens. Among the "sfusato"
lemon specialities the first place is surely taken by the
Conca style rabbit. Browned with white wine and cooked into
the oven, cut and wrapped in lemon leaves, it is among the
most successful inventions of the "cousine of the fishing
fox", as it is metaphorically defined the encounter between
the two souls of the Coast, the rural and the sea ones.
It
is a union sealed, on june 13° by the unique saint patron
who unites the shore of Conca to the rupestrial Tramonti:
Saint Antony from Padova (Padua), invoked in his double
authority of saving shipwrecked persons and harvests.
Lovers
of the bed and table pleasures object of their cult, it is
not merely a case, is Saint Pasquale Baylon, protector of
women and cooks - the people from Furore have changed the
austere Lent into a gastronomical feast, making the
stock-fish, the humble fish of peasants, a kingly meal. The
secret is all in the genial marriage between its tenderest
parts with the brackish borage.
It is a marriage between
"careniello and verraccia", blessed by the colour touch of
the "sponzino", the rare specie of little tomato tasting sun
and saltiness that here spontaneosly grows, diffusing itself
along the hilly plots of ground as an enormous field of
poppies. Preserved hanging from a thread all over the year,
half-way through the spring, with its gaudy red which
competes with the vermilion of the roofs, it is the
luxuriant ornament of balconies and windows. The "sponzino",
an orgy of the senses if it is tasted crashed on bread with
a bit of oil and basil leave, or as in a salad, languidly
wound itself to a soft mozzarella cheese from Tramonti, or a
"caponata" with "freselle", aubergines in oil, capers and
anchovies, it is fixed guest of all dishes of the Amalfi
coast. Imported from beyond the ocean, it was soon adopted
by the Amalfitans. Oriental spices and little tomatoes from
the Americas therefore, in order to "let water go mad" and
to deep into it for a few minutes, basses, "cocci" and
"pezzogne" which on November 30° decorate the table od Saint
Andrew, patron of Amalfi and fishers, and to render
aphorodiasiac the very common chicken of the Lattari
Mountains, an incredible metamorphosis, such as to let us
think of a miracle of Saint Pantaleone. The latter is
considered the guardian of Ravello to whom the most
difficult Graces and the most different protectorates are
attributed, even that of the spinsters who, with a big win
in the lottery, want to provide themselves with a husband
and a trousseau: a novena to the saint from Nicomedia before
the miraculous melting of his blood, on july 27°, to win the
tern which will allow the purchase of precious linens and
silks, a farmyard winged animal to catch, with fork strokes,
the most ricalcitrant bachelor.
The happiest union in the
gastronomy of the Coast is that between tomato and
maccheroni, a red party dress for the dish which is the
pride of the place. Woe to whom speaks of China and Venice
as regards that! Pasta, they say in Minori, was born under
the shade of the Basilica of Saint Trofimena, with the so
many variations invented by the fanciful pasta masters, one
for each seasoning.
Intriguing names, sing-song singing like a nurse-rhyme: the so called
"ndunderi" with ricotta cheese, celebrated together with the
martyr from Minori on july 13°, "cavatielli" pasta with
capers, sea-urchins poached in cheese and little balls of
fat hen, paccheri with ragout, scialatielli with
shell-fishes, cannelloni, respelle, laganelle with
chick-peas, beans or mushrooms. They are called in Tramonti,
laganelle of the dead, because they must be eaten on
November 2° for the "dead celebration day", as heritage of
the cult to the Lares of the Romans who were the first
inhabitants of this windy land.
Maccheroni masters, the
makers of pasta from Minori, Amalfi and Atrani, but even
more of long cut pasta, diffused itself in the whole
neighbourhood when, in the sixteenth century the quick mills
in the valley of Mills were planted. Spaghetti, vermicelli,
linguine are the most reliable partners of that precious
liquid filtered from salted anchovies, which is called
"colatura" and is the main course of the Supper on the
Immaculate Conception Eve and on Christmas Eve.
The
people from Cetara, as they affirm, are the only ones to
have the secret of this piquant sauce which has got very
noble origins, because it directly from the garum of the
imperial Pompei. The legend tells of the occasional
discovery, by the Cistercians of the convent of Saint Peter,
of this infusion having a peculiar bouquet, which is
inimitable. The typical Mediterranean "blue" fish, is
necessarily the prevailing food of a poor menu in which the
extras are represented only by vegetables and potatoes, some
spices and a drop of oil. There is no Saint Peter's day, on
june 29°, without the smell of mint and vinegar of the
"scapece" of anchovies coming out from the boxes, no one
excepted. Cocktail of mint and vinegar also for the course
of the feast of the nearby Vietri Sul Mare which on june 21°
celebrates Saint John the Baptist with the stuffed spleen,
the favourite gluttony of Longobard and Norman Lords of
Salerno. They loved, like their successors, the Swabians,
Angevins and Aragoneses, to avail themselves with first
class chefs and to eat delicious foods. If we only quote
them they make our mouth water: chick-pea soup, yellow as
golden, to be eaten on the New Year's Eve as omen of future
richness, chestnut soup, to make vows to the big mother
Cybeles, a stuffed vegetable soup to welcome the rerival of
nature on Easter's Day and to celebraye, on August 10°, the
tutor of the poor, Saint Lawrence, with the poors' gluttony.
Endives, cabbages, "torzelle" and fennel, cultivated in the
house orchards are boiled and "reinforced" on the day of the
patron Saint, with cotechino, a salted pork bone, preserved
in the cellar immediately after the pig has been
slaughtered.
"Poverty sharpens wit", a famous proverb
says and the inhabitants of the coast are champions in this.
The masterpiece of their cooking skill is the "escaped fish"
('o pesc' fujut') which find two inimitable examples in the
spaghetti with false clams where oil, garlic, parsley and
sponzini tomatoes replace the lacking shell-fishes and in
the squids with potatoes, which can vary according to the
family's need and the quantity of fish caught. The happy
wedding between shellfish and tuber has been consumed in
Praiano where the "big American potato" has found its ideal
habitat, so becoming the main ingredient of the limited
menu. Potatoes all over the year, even on two celebration
days, the first Sunday of july and on july 18°, Saint Luca's
Day. Only the rich people could affort the luxury of candle
cut potatoes with sausage ragout, sausages preserved in the
lard, in order to be "sacrificed" in occasion of this
religious solemnity. For the others, potatoes again,
enriched, more or less, with squids. Calamaries still
characterize the devotional cooking of the neighbouring
Positano, modest fishers' village, before becoming a capital
of wordly pleasures. The squids of the Assumption, browned
by the fried mixture of eggs and flour, is the course with
Positano celebrates the Madonna come from the sea who, after
having long peregrinated, found shelter in this enchanted
place, begging the mariners to put her on the beach by
crying "Posa posa" (that mean "put put"). Here at midnight
the women of the village start their competition to delight
the most demanding palates with an irresistible temptation:
soft sweet zeppolas to be eaten still hot while looking at
the inevitable pyrotechnical show which is among the most
suggestive ones of the whole coast.
Sweet offers to the
Mother coming from afar to save the coastal villages from
natural calamities and barbarian raids. Like Positano also
Maiori, on August 15°, kneels down in front of the effigy of
the Assumpted Madonna, mixing the scent of the incenses with
the fragrance of chocolate which, in a tender hug with the
delicate peels of citrus, lemon and orange, covers with
voluptuous exotism the coarse aubergines. The candies, also
tasted without anything else, are the jujube which makes the
sweet pastry art of the Republic of Amalfi exclusive, that
is that added value to sweets which have become the symbol
of the gastronomy from Campania. The famous Neapolitan
"pastiere" and "sfogliatelle" were born on the coast, thanks
to housewives and nuns get used to prepare tasty pastries
reriving the remnants with the addition of aromas and balms.
On Easter, therefore, there is nothing better than
sweetening the party table by recycling the "yeasterday's
pasta" - because originally the pastiera was a black-pudding
of maccheroni and seasoning it with a sweety ricotta cheese
of the Lattari mountains, eggs, cinnamon, lard aromatized by
a sprinkling of orange flower essence and candy fruit peels.
King Ferdinand, a hearty eater like all Bourbons, had a
weakness for it, but he was ready to go crazy for having a
certified authentic "santarosa sfogliatella", because the
overpaid pastry cookers from Vienna and Parigi were
completely unable of reproducing the tasty stuffing prepared
by the nuns of the convent of Saint Rosa at Conca Dei Marini
in priest-cap shaped pieces, the only secret of which was
perhaps the buttery ricotta cheese of Agerola. No privilege
for the monarch, treated like the other benefactors. The
authentic santarosas were given on August 30° in occasion of
the celebration of the Virgin of Lima, the mystical patron
of florists and gardeners. She is certainly the most
representative saint of the Coast, a chromatic garden
suspended between the sun and the sky. |
