Handpicked experience · Naples
Naples, Italy
Three coastal towns in nine hours, a cliff road from the 1830s that dictates the pace, and the several hundred steps nobody warns you about in Positano.
Stops in all three towns, with unstructured time in each
Time in the central part of Positano
A light meal on a terrace looking out to sea
Collection and return at your accommodation or the port
An air-conditioned vehicle with commentary as you travel
Sorrento, Positano and Amalfi in nine hours, from Naples and back. Three towns on the same stretch of coast, but each one asks something different of you, and the road between them shapes the day more than any of them.
The coastal highway was cut into the cliff face under Bourbon rule and opened in the 1830s, and almost nothing about it has been widened since. It carries well over a hundred bends in about forty kilometres, some of them blind, several of them too tight for two large vehicles to pass without one reversing. In high summer the authorities restrict private cars by number plate, alternating odd and even days, because the alternative is total gridlock. None of this is a fault in the itinerary; it is the physical fact underneath it. Expect long stretches seated and a moderate pace overall.
A thing almost nobody realises. Sorrento faces the Bay of Naples across the peninsula, on a shelf of soft volcanic tuff, and its cliffs and outlook belong to a different sea entirely. Walk to the gorge in the middle of town, a chasm left by an eruption, where an abandoned flour mill sits at the bottom in a pocket of humid air so still that ferns grow on the walls that would not survive twenty metres higher.
The most useful warning of the day. Positano is built down a ravine in tiers, and vehicles cannot descend into it. From where you are set down, reaching the shore means several hundred steps, and coming back means climbing all of them or waiting for the small local bus that grinds up the one-way loop. Judge that against the time you are given before you commit to reaching the water.
The town has a clothing industry of its own, born in the 1950s when a handful of tailors began making loose, bright, unlined summer clothes for the writers and painters who had washed up there after the war. It got a name, moda Positano, and it is still the trade of half the storefronts you will pass.
Amalfi is a small place now, and it was once a naval power to rank with Venice, Genoa and Pisa. Its maritime code governed shipping across the Mediterranean for centuries. What ended it was partly conquest and partly the sea itself: in 1343 a storm and the wave that followed destroyed the lower town outright, and Petrarch, who was there, described the harbour as it went.
Two things survive from that era and both are quiet. The cathedral at the top of its long staircase has bronze doors cast in Constantinople around 1057, among the oldest in Italy and easy to walk straight past. And in the valley behind the town, mills have been making cotton-rag paper since the thirteenth century; one still works, and a museum occupies another in its original premises.
Collection is arranged from accommodation or the port, and the meal provided is a light one, so plan on buying anything more substantial yourself. Cancellation is free up to a day ahead. Gratuities are at your discretion. Bring cash, since several of the smaller places on this coast still prefer it, and shoes you can climb steps in.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Because of the highway itself. It dates from the 1830s, was never widened, and winds through more than a hundred curves in forty-odd kilometres, some so narrow that one of two oncoming vehicles has to back up.
Yes, on foot, and the return is the hard part — several hundred steps up, or a wait for the small municipal bus that circles the one-way route. Weigh it against how long you are given there.
No. It sits on the opposite side of the peninsula overlooking the Bay of Naples, on soft volcanic rock, and geologically it belongs to a different coastline altogether.
The bronze doors at the top of the cathedral steps, cast in Constantinople around 1057, and the rag-paper mills in the valley behind, where the craft has continued since the thirteenth century.
Conquest weakened it, and in 1343 a storm surge wiped out the lower town. Petrarch happened to witness it. What had been a rival of Venice and Genoa never recovered its position.
It is a light one. If you eat properly at midday, budget time and money for something extra during the free time in one of the towns.
Collection and return are arranged at your accommodation or the port. Cancellation is free up to twenty-four hours ahead, and gratuities are left to you.