Amalfi | Around the World with Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

We pulled up our anchor early this morning in the Bay of Sorrento and sailed south down the coast a few hours, which is a much more relaxing way to get to our destination than it is to endure the white-knuckle road called the Amalfi Drive.

The town of Amalfi today has a population of about 5,400 people, squeezed into a narrow ravine with a total area of 2.4 square miles or a bit over 6 square kilometers.

It has always been a small place, but at its peak about the year 1131, it occupied a slightly larger piece of coastline and had a population of about 70,000.

That was when little Amalfi was the capital of the maritime republic known as the Duchy of Amalfi, an important trading power in the Mediterranean.

Amalfi developed extensive trade with Byzantium and Egypt. Amalfitan merchants wrested the Mediterranean trade monopoly from the Arabs and founded mercantile bases in Southern Italy and the Middle East in the 10th century.

And Amalfitans were the first to create a colony in Constantinople.

AN AMALFI ALBUM

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By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Around the corner and below Sorrento is the Amalfi Coast, the Costiera Amalfitana.

This is an especially beautiful stretch of coastline in a beautiful part of the world.

And it is a lot more relaxing to visit on board a luxury cruise ship than by car or coach.

The alternative is to go down the Amalfi Drive. I’ve driven the drive, and lived to tell the tale, although the experience aged me greatly.

The road winds back and forth, hugging the sheer cliff walls on one side and edging up to the sharp dropoff to the sea below on the other.

Oh, and the road is also heavily populated with…how should I say this?….Italian drivers and tourists. The locals drive with what seems to be total abandon. The visitors, like me, clench their steering wheels in a deathlike drip.

The most famous towns are Positano, which hugs the cliff walls, and Amalfi. Past Positano is the city of Salerno.

AN AMALFI ALBUM

Positano was a relatively poor fishing village during the first half of the 20^th century.

It began to attract large numbers of tourists in the 1950s.

John Steinbeck may have helped. In an essay in Harper’s Bazaar, Steinbeck wrote: “Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.”

The church of Santa Maria Assunta features a dome made of majolica tiles as well as a 13^th Byzantine century icon of a black Madonna.

According to local legend, the icon had been stolen from Byzantium and was being transported across the Mediterranean by pirates.

A terrible storm blew up near Positano and the frightened sailors heard a voice saying “Posa, posa!” (“Put down! Put down!”).

The precious icon was unloaded at the fishing village and the storm abated.

And so today, I came back to Positano. I skipped the beach, the ships, and the granita stands and climbed the hill on a photo safari.

A POSITANO ALBUM

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Around the World with Corey Sandler

Tag Archives: Amalfi

6 Oct 2016
Amalfi, Italy:
The City in the Ravine

2 June 2015
Amalfi, Italy: Hugging the Coast

Cruise Photos and Stories by Corey Sandler