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Amalfi district
guide
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Amalfi main information page)
Set in a wide cleft in the cliffs, AMALFI is the largest town
and perhaps the highlight of the coast, and much the best place
to base yourself. It has been an established seaside resort
since Edwardian times, when the British upper classes found the
town a pleasant place to spend their winters. Actually Amalfi's
credentials go back much further: it was an independent republic
during Byzantine times and one of the great naval powers, with a
population of some 70,000; Webster's Duchess of Malfi was set
here, and the city's traders established outposts all over the
Mediterranean, setting up the Order of the Knights of St John of
Jerusalem. Amalfi was finally vanquished by the Normans in 1131,
and the town was devastated by an earthquake in 1343, but there
is still the odd remnant of Amalfi's past glories around today,
and the town has a crumbly attractiveness to its whitewashed
courtyards and alleys that makes it fun to wander through.
The Duomo, at the top of a steep flight of steps, utterly
dominates the town's main piazza, its decorated, almost gaudy
facade topped by a glazed tiled cupola that's typical of the
area. The bronze doors of the church came from Constantinople
and date from 1066. Inside it's a mixture of Saracen and
Romanesque styles, though now heavily restored, with a major
relic in the body of St Andrew buried in its crypt, though the
cloister - the so-called Chiostro del Paradiso (daily: April-Oct
9am-9pm; Nov-March 10am-5pm; L3000/?1.55) - is the most
appealing part of the building, oddly Arabic in feel with its
whitewashed arches and palms. There's an adjacent museum (same
hours and ticket as the cloisters), with various medieval and
episcopal treasures, most intriguingly an eighteenth-century
sedan chair from Macau, which was used by the bishop of Amalfi;
a thirteenth-century mitre sewn with myriad seed pearls, gold
panels and gems; and three silver reliquary heads - two gravely
bearded and medieval, the third an altogether more relaxed and
chubby Renaissance character, with elaborately braided hair.
Almost next door to the duomo, in the Municipio , you can view
the Tavoliere Amalfitana , the book of maritime laws that
governed the republic, and the rest of the Mediterranean, until
1570. On the waterfront, the old Arsenal is a reminder of the
military might of the Amalfi republic, and its ancient vaulted
interior now hosts art exhibitions and suchlike. In the opposite
direction you can follow the main street of Via Genova up
through the heart of Amalfi and out the other side, to where the
town peters out and the gorge narrows into the Valle dei Mulini
, or "Valley of Mills", once the centre of Amalfi's high-quality
paper industry. Apart from a rather desultory paper museum,
there's not much to see here nowadays, despite the grandiose
claims inferred by name, and it's hard to find a mill that is
still functioning - although there is a shop on the left that
makes and bottles its own limoncello (lemon liqueur), a
speciality of the region.
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