There is a location, gently nestled in the middle of the Amalfi Coast, where beauty seems to have found its ideal location and where the slow and inexorable pace of history seems to leave tangible traces for every era. This place is Amalfi, destination every year for millions of tourists from all corners of the world. Characteristic dwellings with colors tending to white, together with the suggestive views and the fascinating Duomo contribute, together with other tourist attractions, to make this city the ideal place for all those visitors who, in addition to discovering all the riches with which it is characterized, they intend to immerse themselves in a culture so vast that it cannot be enclosed in well-defined borders. Given the varied series of sites which can be viewed along the entire Amalfi Coast, Amalfi could therefore represent only one of the selectable stages. Having only one day to admire it, what are the places that you absolutely cannot omit from the roadmap? Following a brief overview by the way.
The dome
The first stop on the tour can only be the famous Duomo, emblem and beating heart of the city. Built in suffrage of the patron saint’s leap from the center of Campania, the Duomo sees the overlapping of artistic and architectural elements as fruits of different eras as its most important distinctive feature, but which are united here by composing a balanced mix. First of all, both the bell tower and the porch will catch your eye. Impossible to overlook is also the long staircase that it surmounts almost like a majestic guardian. The internal fraction of the Cathedral of Amalfi jealously preserves works from the Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance styles.
In the cathedral there is also the crypt of the Apostle Sant’Andrea. The Crypt was built around 1203 by the will of Cardinal Pietro Capuano, who on 8 May 1208 introduced the remains of St. Andrew transported from Constantinople on the return from the IV Crusade. The body of the Apostle was buried in the center of the crypt and around the tomb the rich altar, the bronze statue of the saint, sculpted by Michelangelo Naccherino (pupil of Buonarroti) and the marble sculptures by Pietro Bernini were built around the tomb , depicting S. Stefano and S. Lorenzo. The cross vaults and the walls of the crypt were frescoed in the early 17th century by Neapolitan artists with scenes from the life of Christ. One of the frescoes, painted by Aniello Falcone around 1610, recalls the arrival of the body of S. Andrea in the Cathedral and the miracle of the boy who, falling from the top of a matroneum, remains unharmed. The painting is the only visual testimony of the ancient Roman-Byzantine church. Since 1304, on the occasion of some religious holidays, the miracle of manna has taken place in the crypt, which consists in the secretion of an oily liquid on the surfaces of the tomb of St. Andrew.
The Sant’Andrea Fountain
To show itself in all its beauty, protected by the velvety embrace of Piazza del Duomo, is the Fontana di Sant’Andrea or, as most commonly it is nicknamed, Fontana del Popolo. Carried out in 1760, it was located until the early twentieth century positioned in the middle of the square that houses it. Objective of massive restoration in 2017, the Fountain of Sant’Andrea portrays some maritime divinities on its surface, together with the patron saint of Amalfi.
The Rione Vagliendola
Stage of arrival of a far from metaphorical leap that goes from the sacred to the profane can only be the Rione Vagliendola, with its colors and the genuineness of the people who still live first hand the characteristic atmosphere of this part of the city. Deserving of your interest, once you get here, it will be the Paper Museum, whose walls keep intact tools and machines used in the past to manually produce the paper. Touching this part of the tour will only steal you about twenty minutes, time needed to be enchanted by the charm of an art, that paper mill, worthy of being rediscovered and valued.
The Paper Museum
The Amalfi paper museum is an ex-paper mill converted into a museum in 1969. The museum, located in the Valle dei Mulini, houses the machinery and equipment, properly restored and fully functional, used in the old paper mill to make the paper but no.
The Valley of the Mills
Among the most beautiful nature reserves in all of Campania, Valle dei Mulini expands close to the course of a small river, the Canneto. Its denomination can be traced back to the presence of mills which, especially in past centuries, quilted the Lattari Mountains like a leopard. Given the abundance of water, it is here that the flours used subsequently were produced by local bakers. Nowadays, a stop in the Valle dei Mulini represents a useful opportunity to immerse yourself body and soul in a nature that has always been magnanimous here.
The Cloister of Paradise
Last but not least, there is the most celestial testimony of Arab-Norman art: Cloister of Paradise. Originally born as a cemetery that should have housed the most eminent local characters, its walls are home to valuable mosaics and arches that bring together columns with an elegantly minute shape.
