SECRET POSITANO: THE QUARTIERI

28.10.2024 POSITANO

To get off the beaten track in this vertical paradise, there’s nothing for it but to climb a few steps. (Okay, to be honest, a lot of steps). The reward is a Positano few tourists ever see.

As Le Sirenuse prepares to close its doors until March 2025 after a busy but hugely enriching season, we have decided to thank all our guests, and the town that nurtured us, with a brief guide to Positano’s quiet residential quartieri. Next time you come visit, we’d love to show you this Positano of the positanesi.

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Fornillo

Descending Viale Pasitea from the Amalfi Drive road, you pass a charming sight – a rustic stone creche or Nativity scene, created inside a natural grotto, depicting a miniature Positano. This marks the upper limit of Fornillo, a residential district perched on the steep hillside above the bay and beach of the same name.

It centres on a pretty little piazza in front of the apricot-hued church of Santa Margherita, which has a fine maiolica floor (to see it, you’ll need to come just before Saturday evening mass or in the days leading up to Margaret’s feast day, 20 July, when the entire quartiere celebrates, and pregnant women come to be blessed by their patron saint).

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Continue down the steps in front of the church to reach the shingle and sand beach. Cupped in a rocky bay, it’s popular with local families and perfect for a quick early morning or sunset swim. At the western end of the beach, the Torre di Clavel is a sixteenth-century watchtower that became an artistic salon in the early twentieth century when it was owned by eccentric Swiss aesthete Gilbert Clavel (you can read part of its fascinating story here).

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Clavel was not the only cultural figure associated with Fornillo. Dutch artist M.C. Escher – the subject of a forthcoming Journal post – stayed here with his wife Jetta between May and June 1934. After visiting the beach, walk to its eastern end to pick up the footpath that leads via a panoramic balcony path to Positano’s main ferry quay and beach.

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Liparlati

Stand on Positano’s ferry quay, with your back to sea, and let your gaze drift up past the wine-red walls of Le Sirenuse. The last houses you see before the slopes become too steep for human habitation are those of the Liparlati district. Even from this distance, you can make out a trio of grand ancient villas, which belonged to some of the city’s leading mercantile families. Liparlati is accessed via the steep road and steps that head up directly opposite the Palatone grocery on the town’s main ‘Amalfi Drive’ road, Via Marconi. At the top of the ramp, you can either turn right towards the cemetery or left towards the church of San Giacomo. We recommend making time for both. The cemetery path, Via Santa Croce, leads past a couple of those grand villas with marvelous views across citrus gardens to Positano’s bay and hill of houses.

A writer who fled his native Germany in 1937, Andres was just one of the artistic emigrés who arrived in Positano in the 1920s and 1930s in search of refuge. They were welcomed by the inhabitants of a town that knew all about the pain of migration. Desperately poor in these inter-war years, Positano had lost many of its own inhabitants to emigration, especially towards the United States. Andres gave Liparlati the name of la città morta, ‘the dead city’, because at this time so many of its houses were empty, or very nearly so.

Returning to the top of the main access road into the district, continue straight on up a stepped path to enter the more villagey part of Liparlati. There’s a lovely little panoramic square here, appropriately called Piazza Bellina, with a stone bench by a drinking fountain. The recently restored church of San Giacomo with its pretty belltower becomes the centre of the district’s annual celebrations on the saint’s feast day of 25 July.

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Chiesa Nuova

Looking like a mosque from certain angles, Positano’s highest church is also, despite its name, one of the town’s oldest, dating back to the early Middle Ages. It was given the name ‘New Church’ when it was extensively remodelled in the 18th century in late Baroque style.

The oval interior is distinguished by a delightful maiolica floor and stucco ceiling, in the centre of which painted cherubs look down from rose-shaped clouds.

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Local kids use the piazza outside for soccer practice (when closed, the door of the church makes for a perfect goal). On the wall of the church a sign that translates “Ball Games are Strictly Forbidden” resignedly surveys the sporting action.

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The rest of the quartiere is a maze of stepped paths, ochre-hued houses and small walled gardens. Ascending Via Chiesa Nuova from the church, you soon reach the Via Corvo road that connects Positano with the satellite village of Montepertuso and Nocelle. Cross it, climb the (inevitable) flight of steps, and you will find yourself before long on an ancient paved stairway called Le Tese, that leads up to the village of Santa Maria di Castello high above.

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Once upon a time, many Positano families owned a mule, a couple of donkeys, sometimes also a milk cow. But for obvious reasons there was no grassland in this vertical town. So when it was haymaking season, young women – and it was always the women – would set off early in the morning, often before dawn, to climb up from sea level to 680 metres – a little over 2,000 feet. They would reap grass up there to create huge bundles call sarcine, some weighing as much as fifty kilos, which they would haul onto their backs and support with a band around their foreheads. They would then walk back to Positano over the mountain rocks and down thousands of steps. Today, Le Tese is plied only by the occasional walker or trail runner: a shame, as it is as much a part of Positano’s history as the Posa Posa icon in the mother church.

Photos © Roberto Salomone, with additional images by Lee Marshall

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