The 8 best hidden beach towns in Campania

1. Pisciotta

Best for a trip without a car. The train stops in the commune.

2 h 5 min from Salerno · homes €1,250 to €1,750 a m² in the center · 2,410 people

Why visit Pisciotta

The hill the town occupies rises between Ascea and Palinuro, part of the strictest zone of the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, and the ridge gives the stone houses of the centro storico a clear line of sight to Capo Palinuro twelve kilometers south. The town's parts sit at different elevations doing different work: the historic core holds the ridge at 171 meters, the olive terraces cover the slopes below it, and Marina di Pisciotta occupies the shore at the foot of the hill, where the fishing boats go out.

The menaica net worked by the Marina's fishermen is a technique once widespread around the Mediterranean and now reduced to a few coves, of which this is one. Carlo Pisacane's failed 1857 revolutionary expedition landed at Sapri and was crushed nearby; the Cilento coast keeps the memory in plaques and processions rather than in any structure at Pisciotta itself.

What holds the town together is elevation: everything of note here, the anchovies, the olives, the beach, the ridge, is defined by how far it sits above or below that 171-meter line.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

The catch: The nearest airport, Naples, is 3 h 2 min away by road.

What to see in Pisciotta

• Centro storico di Pisciotta. Hilltop medieval core of stone houses on a ridge 171 meters above the sea, with a clear sightline to Capo Palinuro.
• Marina di Pisciotta. Fishing port at the foot of the hill, departure point for the last menaica anchovy boats on the coast, its beach holding the Blue Flag.
• Uliveti di Pisciottana. Terraces holding trees of considerable age, the source groves of the Cilento DOP extra-virgin oil.

How to get to Pisciotta

It has its own railway station. Salerno is about 2 h 5 min away by road.

Everything we know about Pisciotta

2. Centola

Best for a wine weekend. It belongs to the national association of wine towns.

1 h 55 min from Salerno · homes €880 to €1,100 a m² in the center · 4,963 people

Why visit Centola

Centola sits inside the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park, with four frazioni stretched between hill and shore. The hilltop centro began as a refuge for survivors of ancient Molpa, the coastal city destroyed by the Byzantine general Belisarius in 547 AD; the name likely traces to centum illuc, the hundred who fled uphill.

Centola joined the Cilento revolt of 1828 and adopted the Proclamation of Palinuro, then lost most of its population to emigration across the Americas after Unification. The commune holds a Bandiera Blu on the Palinuro coast and belongs to Città del Vino.

The hilltop and the cape are seven kilometers apart with seventy meters of climb between them, a short distance that nonetheless separates two different lives: one built by people who ran from the water, the other built on people coming back to it for the beach and the caves. What was once a flight inland has become, centuries later, a pull back toward the coast it fled.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

The catch: The nearest airport, Naples, is 2 h 38 min away by road.

What to see in Centola

• Centro storico di Centola. Hilltop old town above the Mingardo valley, founded by survivors who climbed from the coast after it was sacked; the streets sit apart from the shore below, reached by a climb of some seventy meters over the distance between.
• Palinuro. The seaside frazione at the cape, sitting where the Lambro and Mingardo rivers meet the sea, its marina the departure point for boats along the promontory.
• Ruderi di Molpa. Remains of the ancient coastal settlement destroyed by Belisarius in 547 AD, on the promontory above the Mingardo mouth, the origin point of the hilltop town itself.

How to get to Centola

It has its own railway station. Salerno is about 1 h 55 min away by road.

Everything we know about Centola

3. Ascea

Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.

1 h 50 min from Salerno · homes €860 to €1,150 a m² in the center · 5,832 people

Why visit Ascea

Ascea sits on the southern Cilento coast, two settlements in one comune: Ascea Paese at 230 meters above olive groves, and Ascea Marina on the flat between the Alento river and the sea. The Greek colonists from Phocaea founded Hyele here around 538 BC after fleeing the Persians; the city became Elea in Greek and Velia in Roman times, and produced the Eleatic school of Parmenides and Zeno that founded Western metaphysics.

The archaeological park keeps the Porta Rosa, the oldest known round arch in Europe, an Ionian temple acropolis, Roman baths and the medieval Castelluccio Angioino built on the city's highest point. Modern Ascea is a Bandiera Blu beach commune of nine kilometers of sand inside the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park, with the Spighe Verdi mark for agro-environmental quality.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

The catch: The nearest airport, Naples, is 2 h 33 min away by road.

What to see in Ascea

• Parco Archeologico di Elea-Velia. Ruins of the Greek city founded around 538 BC by Phocaeans, home to Parmenides and the Eleatic school, with Porta Rosa, Ionic temple acropolis and Roman baths.
• Castelluccio Angioino. Medieval Angevin tower built on the highest point of ancient Velia, reusing Greek and Roman masonry, restored as the park's viewpoint.
• Marina di Ascea. Nine kilometers of fine sand between the Alento river mouth and Punta del Telegrafo, Bandiera Blu and Spighe Verdi within the Cilento national park.

How to get to Ascea

It has its own railway station. Salerno is about 1 h 50 min away by road.

Everything we know about Ascea

4. Anacapri

Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.

homes €5,300 to €8,100 a m² in the center · 6,757 people

Why visit Anacapri

Anacapri occupies the western, higher plateau of Capri, about 150 meters above the harbor town, at 275 meters at the municipal center and rising to 589 at Monte Solaro. The Ancient Greek prefix ana means up: the name simply says the upper one.

Until 1874 the only link between the two communes was a stairway of some 800 steps, cut by Greek settlers in the seventh or sixth century BC, not by Phoenicians despite what its common name suggests. In 1895 the Swedish physician Axel Munthe began building his villa on the ledge above those steps, on the ruins of one of Tiberius's residences and a tenth-century chapel.

His 1929 memoir turned the place into a literary destination. The two communes of Capri, one at sea level and one on the plateau above, were for centuries connected only by that stair cut into the rock, and a settlement reachable only on foot from its lower twin is a different kind of place than one arrived at by road.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €8,100 a m².

What to see in Anacapri

• Villa San Michele. Neoclassical villa and garden with an antiquities collection and a granite Sphinx set over the harbor, facing east toward Vesuvius.
• Monte Solaro. Reached by a single-seat chairlift from Piazza Vittoria, the summit opens onto views across the whole of Capri.
• Faro di Punta Carena. Second-tallest lighthouse in Italy, built in 1862 and operational since 1867, at the southwestern tip of the island.

Everything we know about Anacapri

5. Camerota

Best for walks in a national park. Part of the comune lies in a national park.

2 h 10 min from Salerno · homes €950 to €1,250 a m² in the center · 6,802 people

Why visit Camerota

Camerota's hilltop sits six kilometers inland from its own marina, with two further hamlets, Lentiscosa and Licusati, scattered between the summit and the sea, so the town is really four settlements bound to one name rather than a single center. That name probably comes from the Greek kamaròtos, curved, after the limestone arches worked into the coast below.

The hill above stays a medieval center, nearly empty through winter and full in August, its slopes also carrying Cilento DOP olive oil down toward the water. The coast beneath it is a different register entirely: fishing village, protected marine reserve, and a run of sea caves whose excavated layers reach back through the Chalcolithic to Neanderthal occupation, among the longest such sequences on the Tyrrhenian.

What holds the two together is the geography itself, a limestone hill giving its shape to both the arches that named it and the caves that preserved what lived along its shore.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

The catch: The nearest airport, Naples, is 2 h 54 min away by road.

What to see in Camerota

• Grotte di Marina di Camerota. Grotta della Cala and Grotta di San Biagio sit cut into the sea cliffs, reached along the coast rather than from the hilltop, the caves themselves unassuming from outside despite what has come out of them.
• Costa degli Infreschi e della Masseta. The marine area runs between the Marina and Scario, cold freshwater surfacing straight into the sea, a stretch reachable only on foot or by boat, with no road running along it.
• Castello Marchesale di Camerota. Norman in origin, remodelled under the Marchesi, standing on the highest point of the town with the Gulf of Policastro laid out below.

How to get to Camerota

Salerno is about 2 h 10 min away by road.

Everything we know about Camerota

6. Castellabate

Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.

1 h 18 min from Salerno · homes €1,350 to €1,800 a m² in the center · 8,706 people

Why visit Castellabate

Castellabate sits on a Cilento ridge about fifty kilometers south of Salerno, the hilltown above and the hamlets below strung along the same stretch of coast. Santa Maria, San Marco, Ogliastro Marina and Licosa run along the bay where the Saracens were defeated in 846 by a coalition of Naples, Amalfi, Sorrento and Gaeta, long before the castle on the ridge was ever built.

The abbey that gave the hilltown its name lay inland from this shoreline history, so the place carries two separate pasts: a coastal one tied to the ninth-century battle, and an upland one tied to the twelfth-century abbot's foundation. The commune today counts about nine thousand residents and holds together as a Bandiera Blu community inside the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park, with the promontory to the south marking the edge of the protected marine area.

The borgo above keeps the stone and the views, the hamlets below keep the bay and the beaches, and the two halves of Castellabate read less as a single town than as an upper and lower settlement joined by the ridge between them.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

What to see in Castellabate

• Castello dell'Abate. Castle begun on 10 October 1123 by Saint Costabile Gentilcore, fourth abbot of the Trinità della Cava, gave the village its name as Castrum Abbatis.
• Centro storico di Castellabate. Hilltop borgo at 280 meters, one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia, stone alleys around the castle and views down to the bay and the promontory beyond.
• Basilica Pontificia di Santa Maria de Gulia. Twelfth-century mother church at Santa Maria di Castellabate, raised to pontifical basilica in the twentieth century, with a wooden statue of the Madonna.

How to get to Castellabate

Salerno is about 1 h 18 min away by road.

Everything we know about Castellabate

7. Piano di Sorrento

Best for everyday life on foot. Eight of the ten everyday services we look for are mapped within 500 meters of the center.

49 min from Naples · homes €3,800 to €5,900 a m² in the center · 12,213 people

Why visit Piano di Sorrento

Piano di Sorrento sits at ninety-six meters on the tuff terrace of the Sorrentine peninsula, four kilometers east of Sorrento, thirty kilometers from Napoli. The upper plain has been inhabited since the second millennium BC: pottery and a necropolis from the Gaudo culture were excavated between the frazioni of Trinità and San Massimo.

The town was tied to Sorrento until 1808, when Joseph Bonaparte's reform separated it as an autonomous comune. The local name, Caruotto, comes from the Latin carottum, quarry, after the tuff pits that fed the building of the peninsula.

The Basilica di San Michele Arcangelo, ninth century in origin, was raised to papal basilica status by Benedict XV in 1914 and holds two large inlaid wooden doors. The Villa Fondi de Sangro, a neoclassical 1840 villa above the cliff, now houses the Georges Vallet archaeological museum and faces the Marina di Cassano below.

The marina has black volcanic sand, fishing boats and a small port that still works.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

The catch: Homes in the center cost up to €5,900 a m².

What to see in Piano di Sorrento

• Basilica di San Michele Arcangelo. Ninth-century church raised to papal basilica status in 1914 by Benedict XV, with large inlaid wooden doors and a baroque interior in the centro of Piano.
• Villa Fondi de Sangro. Neoclassical villa of 1840 above the cliff, now seat of the Museo Archeologico Georges Vallet, with finds from the Massa Lubrense and Sorrento peninsula excavations.
• Marina di Cassano. Small fishing port with black volcanic sand at the foot of the cliff, reached by a steep path from the upper town, still active for inshore fishing.

How to get to Piano di Sorrento

It has its own railway station. Naples is about 49 min away by road. The full route from Naples.

Everything we know about Piano di Sorrento

8. Massa Lubrense

Best for a long lunch. Food guides list nine tables here.

1 h 9 min from Naples · homes €3,000 to €4,600 a m² in the center · 14,186 people

Why visit Massa Lubrense

Massa Lubrense holds the western tip of the Sorrentine Peninsula, the largest municipal area on the peninsula and the closest land to Capri, three nautical miles across the Bocche di Capri. The hilltop centro sits at 121 meters; the commune's eighteen frazioni spread between the Tyrrhenian and the Gulf of Salerno, including Termini, Nerano, Sant'Agata sui Due Golfi and the Marina della Lobra.

Punta Campanella, the cape at the end, has the remains of a Roman sanctuary of Athena and a sixteenth-century watchtower against Saracen raids; the surrounding sea is a protected marine area established in 1997. The commune holds a Bandiera Blu, a Spiga Verde, and Città dell'Olio status: the Penisola Sorrentina DOP olive groves climb the hills above the bays.

Spaghetti alla Nerano, courgette and provolone del Monaco, is the dish that came out of these kitchens in the 1950s.

The beach here holds a Blue Flag, the international award a comune has to win back every year on water quality, beach management and safety.

What to see in Massa Lubrense

• Punta Campanella. Cape at the western tip of the peninsula, with the ruins of a Roman sanctuary of Athena, a watchtower, and the marine reserve established in 1997.
• Marina del Cantone. Pebble bay at Nerano, Italy's largest pebble beach by some measures and the kitchen where spaghetti alla Nerano was created.
• Chiesa di Santa Maria della Lobra. Sixteenth-century mother church above the small Marina della Lobra, with a wooden coffered ceiling and a former Franciscan convent attached.

How to get to Massa Lubrense

Naples is about 1 h 9 min away by road.

Everything we know about Massa Lubrense