Amalfi: one more host of coast postcards

(Say that five times real fast with your mouth full of bubble gum!)

Somewhere along the road between Positano and Amalfi is this house. As we wound our way past it, our driver mentioned almost casually that it is Sophia Loren’s. He was not, however, the least bit amenable to pulling over while I checked to see if she was at home. What kind of Italian man is he, I wondered? (Photo source: Leslie, who was sitting on the right side of the bus to grab this shot as we went by.)

= = =

The day after Leslie’s and my Amalfi dinner, the group went for a walk up the hill from the hotel into Amalfi’s beautiful town square. One side of it was a lengthy stairway to the main entrance of the town’s Duomo.

Amalfi’s wonderful piazza pretty much invites to pause over a cappuccino while you ponder your climb up the steps leading up to the Duomo’s front door, which are just visible on the far side of the square.

The Amalfi Duomo is another reason why sometimes a small group tour in the hands of an informed tour organizer is definitely the way to go for at least part of a trip. Before we entered, Sharon had said to us repeatedly – be sure you go down to the crypt – something we might not have been disposed to do had we simply been touring unguided. But we did – and we’ll get to that amazing place just a couple photos farther on.

Amalfi – like Orvieto – has a stunning Duomo that seems out of all proportion to the relatively small size of the town.

Here is a closer view of the Duomo’s staircase and front entrance, seen from the street level in the piazza.

You can be forgiven if you think this is a shot of the main part of its interior – but it is, in fact, the crypt.

And here is one of the principal wall decorations inside the crypt.

At this point, some of the more astute among you might have started to put a few clues together as to who is the most significant resident in the crypt’s tombs. I confess I only clued in when I asked another woman visiting at the same time who the figure is standing to the left of Christ. Her reply left me with a bruise on my forehead when I slapped myself and muttered, “Well of course it is!”

One more clue?

Recognize this?

I guess the fact that one doesn’t immediately connect wild rocky island highlands and bone-chilling lowland mists with the balmy climate of southern Italy might cause you to overlook any consideration that buried deep beneath a Duomo in the town that gives the Amalfi coast its name is Scotland’s patron saint. But the Amalfi Duomo crypt is indeed the final resting place of the bones of St Andrew.

The huge wooden “X” behind him in the crypt’s wall portrait, and its somewhat more stylized presence on the flag of Scotland also commemorates his death on an X-shaped cross.

So… a brief history lesson (because we’re about so much more than just pretty pictures here).

The original Amalfi Duomo was built in the 9thC (that would be when years were rendered in only three digits and the first would be an “8”) specifically as a dedication to Andrew, one of Christ’s apostles.

In addition to its interior and remarkable crypt, the Duomo is also the site of the oldest bronze doors in the entire country to have been cast after the Roman era. (History records they were cast in Constantinople “sometime before 1066”.)

Here are the full doors.

And here is a much closer view of the upper part of their frame, and the graphic symbolism that is repeated across them from top to bottom, framing four portraits in the middle: of Christ, his mother and the Saints Andrew and Peter. (Guess who that is represented in the solo portrait in the upper arch over the doors.)

So at this point, we’ll leave the spiritual elevation to be found inside the magnificent Amalfi Duomo behind and move on to the physical vertigo-inducing elevation of the next stop on our tour: Ravello.

Getting to Ravello involved – something I would not have thought at all possible – navigating a road even more winding and narrow than the laughably named Amalfi coast “highway”. It wouldn’t be the last time I would mutter a silent message of appreciation for the fact we were in driver Luigi’s capable hands.

Here’s a view from the bus as we climbed. The lighter green patches on the hillside terraces are groves of lemon trees while the darker squarish patches are vineyards. Whatever the harvest, you have to appreciate the fearlessness of the people who routinely go into these areas to pick the fruit when it is ripe!

When most tourists planning a trip start looking for highlights of the Amalfi coast, Capri always comes up, but so too does Ravello and for Leslie and me, the latter far outshone the former as “worth a diversion”, as the Michelin Guide writers would say.

By the time you reach the astonishing heights of this place, you’re not the least bit surprised to discover that it was originally built (in the 5thC) as a place where waterside residents could seek shelter from the many ship-borne barbarian invasions that ravaged the coast after the Western Roman Empire fell.

One can almost imagine the barbarians landing in a howling horde along the rocky coast and then casting their eyes upward… WAY upward to the structures perched on the cliff edge of Ravello more than a thousand feet above them. “Alright men…” would bark the invaders’ commander, “There’s the hill; TAKE the hill.”

After a short, sharp chorus of however one said “Screw that!” in the invaders’ tongue, the commander would desultorily wave his sword, guide his less-than-enthusiastic hordes back to the boats and off they’d go in search of easier pickings.

A view from Ravello, literally from cloud level. 6thC villagers probably gathered at this very spot to laugh at the barbarian hordes on the beach more than a mile below and then cheer as they re-embarked in search of a conquest that did not require mountaineering skills to attack.

Once its safety was generally accepted, Ravello became an important centre of wool production about 400 years later and drew the attraction of many of the region’s noble families, probably for no more reason than it was a stunning holiday getaway among the mountaintop breezes. Many of the old family names are today preserved in the names of several Palazzos that dot the town.

We were visiting two today: the Villa Rufolo and the Villa Cimbrone.

In the late 1800s, the Villa Rufalo was visited by Richard Wagner and he himself claimed that it was the source of inspiration for the stage design he proposed for his three-act opera, Parsifal.

I didn’t know beans about the story of Parsifal. I still don’t. But Eliana, our intrepid archaeological graduate guide, did and she was bound and determined she was going to share it with us. The problem was that the very moment she began the story in a gorgeous courtyard in the shadow of a bell tower, a thundering peal erupted from the tower and continued for pretty much the entire 15 minutes or so it took Eliana to regale anyone who was standing right beside her… because the bells utterly drowned her out for anyone who was a foot or more away.

I’m sure it is a fascinating story. Clearly it is of sufficient renown, and the connection to Wagner held in such high regard, that Ravello is home to an annual Wagner music festival. Meanwhile, I will have to Google the Parsifal story sometime. (Apparently, the name is Wagner’s spin on Percival, a knight who quested in vain for the Holy Grail.)

Eliana clearly was enthusiastic about it and had we been competent lip readers, I’m sure everyone in our little group would have been equally enthused, but since Eliana and the carillon finished at about the same time, her take on the story will remain forever unheard – at least by our ringing ears.

Villa Rufolo’s ancient bell tower. As we discovered, the bells still work beautifully.

I’ve mentioned Eliana and Back-Roads Tours’ Sharon often enough that you might like to have faces to attach to their names. Here they are, an appropriate enough addition at this point in my narrative because this shot shows them in the Ravello sunshine. Sharon is on the left.

Our second villa, Villa Cimbrone’s, highlight is its incredible garden, which ends at a breathtaking overlook of the coast and a huge swath of this part of the Mediterranean. The feeling you can see forever was clearly the inspiration for the name the builder gave the garden’s overlook: the Terrace of the Infinite.

Although the site was first built in the 11thC, it fell into decay when it was abandoned in the late 1800s. It did not remain unknown, however, and when Ernest William Beckett (Lord Grimthorpe), a well-educated and widely respected English traveller, fell into a deep depression after the early death of his wife, friends suggested a trip to Ravello. The cure worked its emotional recovery so well that he bought the nearly-ruined estate in 1904 and set about bringing it back to life, accentuated with a combination of gardens and sculptured artworks whose design and placement was worked out with some of the finest landscape architects of the day.

The site has since provided inspiration for the likes of Gore Vidal, Vita Sackville West and the Bloomsbury Group, to name just a few.

Here’s why:

The gardens.

Leslie and I – soaking up some of the inspiration in the company of our new-found marble-faced friend at the edge of the Terrace of the Infinite.

Another view from the Terrace. On the other side of that rail is a direct plummet of about a thousand feet.

Sharon let us have some free time to wander about Ravello and both Leslie and I agree it is probably among the best places in the world to engage in people watching. Staking out a piazza café, we saw several wedding parties and had great fun watching as the various groups set up for photos. One of the things that amazed us most was the choice of unbelievably lofty stiletto heels on the shoes of the young women – even on cobblestoned streets. Later, Sharon told us that Italian women’s penchant for walking arm-in-arm has nothing whatsoever to do with affection – it’s to help them keep each other from toppling over!

I wish I were exaggerating, but this was typical of the style and perilous height of the ankle-busters we saw on the feet of many of the wedding guests wobbling around the cobblestones as we watched while enjoying an al fresco lunch in one of Ravello’s piazzas. (Photo: trendhunter.com)

We’re going to leave the Amalfi coast now. But not without a last wistful look over our shoulders.

We’re also winding down to the end of the group portion of our tour – with just one more stop before we go our separate ways. But it is no less amazing than the many sights we’ve visited so far, and if you can recall back to my first trip note – the general overview – then you’ll recall the name Paestum. That’s where we’ll start the next update.