stories from the sea

On the vertiginous Amalfi Coast, centuries of history hang above preposterously beautiful vistas, producing an effect that is, for Stanley Stewart, endlessly intoxicating

aIl places have narratives: a back catalog of plot. On the Amalfi Coast, one of the most quintessentially Italian places in Italy, there are stories of the visiting Greeks and the temples they built and filled with lithe sculptures; the Arabs and their colored tile work; the Normans, nervously building watchtowers in case the Saracens turned up; the medieval fleets of Amalfi itself, commanding the Mediterranean and sailing home with cargoes of silver and lemon-tree saplings. There is the myth of Odysseus, ghosting past the sirens, and the tales of celebrities coming south from Rome in the 1950s and 1960s: people such as Franco Zeffirelli, John Steinbeck, and Jackie Kennedy, astonished by the sheer gorgeousness of the area and how blissfully separate it was from any place or any life they knew.

A narrow, acrobatic road hugs the cliffs, disorienting people unaccustomed to driving within a couple of inches of someone else's side-view mirror. At each bend, there's another sharp intake of breath, another panoramic view, another story waiting to be told. Amalfi's renowned beauty can seem unreal: a barely credible conjunction of sea, sky, and mountains. Beneath the cliffs, the land swoons down through a tumult of rock, blossoms, pine trees, and villas to a shore indented with bays. Seen from above, the sea is always the most extraordinary blue, its surface patterned with winds and cloud shadows, the wakes of pleasure boats scrolling behind like vapor trails.