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Amalfi

Italian comune

Amalfi is a town and comune in the province of Salerno, in the region of Campania, Italy, on the Gulf of Salerno. It lies at the mouth of a deep ravine, at the foot of Monte Cerreto (1,315 metres, 4,314 feet), surrounded by dramatic cliffs and coastal scenery. The town of Amalfi was the capital of the maritime republic known as the Duchy of Amalfi, an important trading power in the Mediterranean between 839 and around 1200.

A view of Amalfi
The Duomo di Amalfi

The town became a popular seaside resort beginning in the Edwardian era, with members of the British upper class spending their winters in Amalfi. Amalfi is the main town of the coast on which it is located, named Costiera Amalfitana (Amalfi Coast), and is today an important tourist destination together with other towns on the same coast, such as Positano, Ravello and others. Amalfi is included in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

A patron saint of Amalfi is Saint Andrew, the Apostle, whose relics are kept at Amalfi Cathedral (Cattedrale di Sant'Andrea/Duomo di Amalfi).

Quotes

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  • Then there is Amalfi, the most prosperous town in Lombardy, the most noble, the most illustrious on account of its conditions, and most affluent and opulent. The territory of Amalfi borders on that of Naples. This is a fair city, but less important than Amalfi.

Poems of Places

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places, Vol. 11: Italy 1 (1877), pp. 51–57
  • There would I linger, then go forth again;
    And he who steers due east, doubling the cape,
    Discovers, in a crevice of the rock,
    The fishing-town, Amalfi. Haply there
    A heaving bark, an anchor on the strand,
    May tell him what it is; but what it was,
    Cannot be told so soon.
                    The time has been,
    When on the quays along the Syrian coast,
    ’Twas asked and eagerly, at break of dawn,
    “What ships are from Amalfi?” when her coins,
    Silver and gold, circled from clime to clime;
    From Alexandria southward to Sennaar,
    And eastward, through Damascus and Cabul
    And Samarcand, to thy great wall, Cathay.
    Then were the nations by her wisdom swayed;
    And every crime on every sea was judged
    According to her judgments. In her port
    Prows, strange, uncouth, from Nile and Niger met,
    People of various feature, various speech;
    And in their countries many a house of prayer,
    And many a shelter, where no shelter was,
    And many a well, like Jacob’s in the wild,
    Rose at her bidding. Then in Palestine,
    By the wayside, in sober grandeur stood
    A hospital, that, night and day, received
    The pilgrims of the west; and, when ’twas asked,
    “Who are the noble founders?” every tongue
    At once replied, “The merchants of Amalfi.”
    That hospital, when Godfrey scaled the walls,
    Sent forth its holy men in complete steel;
    And hence, the cowl relinquished for the helm,
    That chosen band, valiant, invincible,
    So long renowned as champions of the Cross,
    In Rhodes, in Malta.
                    For three hundred years
    There, unapproached but from the deep, they dwelt;
    Assailed forever, yet from age to age
    Acknowledging no master. From the deep
    They gathered in their harvests; bringing home,
    In the same ship, relics of ancient Greece,
    That land of glory where their fathers lay,
    Grain from the golden vales of Sicily,
    And Indian spices. Through the civilized world
    Their credit was ennobled into fame;
    And when at length they fell, they left mankind
    A legacy, compared with which the wealth
    Of Eastern kings, what is it in the scale?—
    The mariner’s compass.
  • It is the mid-May sun that, rayless and peacefully gleaming,
    Out of its night’s short prison this blessed of lands is redeeming;
    It is the fire evoked from the hearts of the citron and orange,
    So that they hang, like lamps of the day, translucently beaming;
    It is the veinless water, and air unsoiled by a vapor,
    Save what, out of the fulness of life, from the valley is steaming;
    It is the olive that smiles, even he, the sad growth of the moonlight,
    Over the flowers, whose breasts triple-folded with odors are teeming;—
    Yes, it is these bright births that to me are a shame and an anguish;
    They are alive and awake,—I dream, and know I am dreaming;
    I cannot bathe my soul in this ocean of passion and beauty,—
    Not one dewdrop is on me of all that about me is streaming;
    O, I am thirsty for life,—I pant for the freshness of nature,
    Bound in the world’s dead sleep, dried up by its treacherous seeming.
  • Sweet the memory is to me
    Of a land beyond the sea,
    Where the waves and mountains meet,
    Where amid her mulberry-trees
    Sits Amalfi in the heat,
    Bathing ever her white feet
    In the tideless summer seas.
    In the middle of the town,
    From its fountains in the hills,
    Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
    The Canneto rushes down,
    Turns the great wheels of the mills,
    Lifts the hammers of the forge.
    ’Tis a stairway, not a street,
    That ascends the deep ravine,
    Where the torrent leaps between
    Rocky walls that almost meet.
    Toiling up from stair to stair
    Peasant girls their burdens bear;
    Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
    Stately figures tall and straight,
    What inexorable fate
    Dooms them to this life of toil?
    Lord of vineyards and of lands,
    Far above the convent stands.
    On its terraced walk aloof
    Leans a monk with folded hands,
    Placid, satisfied, serene,
    Looking down upon the scene
    Over wall and red-tiled roof;
    Wondering unto what good end
    All this toil and traffic tend,
    And why all men cannot be
    Free from care and free from pain,
    And the sordid love of gain,
    And as indolent as he.
    Where are now the freighted barks
    From the marts of east and west;
    Where the knights in iron sarks
    Journeying to the Holy Land,
    Glove of steel upon the hand,
    Cross of crimson on the breast?
    Where the pomp of camp and court?
    Where the pilgrims with their prayers?
    Where the merchants with their wares,
    And their gallant brigantines
    Sailing safely into port
    Chased by corsair Algerines?
    Vanished like a fleet of cloud,
    Like a passing trumpet-blast,
    Are those splendors of the past,
    And the commerce and the crowd!
    Fathoms deep beneath the seas
    Lie the ancient wharves and quays,
    Swallowed by the engulfing waves;
    Silent streets and vacant halls,
    Ruined roofs and towers and walls;
    Hidden from all mortal eyes
    Deep the sunken city lies:
    Even cities have their graves!
    This is an enchanted land!
    Round the headlands far away
    Sweeps the blue Salernian bay
    With its sickle of white sand:
    Further still and furthermost
    On the dim discovered coast
    Pæstum with its ruins lies,
    And its roses all in bloom
    Seem to tinge the fatal skies
    Of that lonely land of doom.
    On his terrace, high in air,
    Nothing doth the good monk care
    For such worldly themes as these.
    From the garden just below
    Little puffs of perfume blow,
    And a sound is in his ears
    Of the murmur of the bees
    In the shining chestnut-trees;
    Nothing else he heeds or hears.
    All the landscape seems to swoon
    In the happy afternoon;
    Slowly o’er his senses creep
    The encroaching waves of sleep,
    And he sinks, as sank the town,
    Unresisting, fathoms down,
    Into caverns cool and deep!
    Walled about with drifts of snow,
    Hearing the fierce north-wind blow,
    Seeing all the landscape white,
    And the river cased in ice,
    Comes this memory of delight,
    Comes this vision unto me
    Of a long-lost Paradise,
    In the land beyond the sea.
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