The 10 best towns inside a nature park that have a serious restaurant in the province of Salerno
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The coast of the province of Salerno is built on limestone and lemon terraces, held up by dry stone walls that have been repaired every winter for centuries. The houses are lime-washed, vaulted, stacked into ravines where the rock runs straight into deep water. The cooking is anchovy and colatura, scialatielli, walnut and lemon, buffalo mozzarella carried down from the Sele plain, fish grilled without ceremony. Spring smells of citrus blossom, autumn of pressed grapes and wet stone, and the water stays warm well past the end of the season.
Most people arrive on the coast having already booked Sorrento or a day on Capri, and the two absorb an enormous share of the traffic on this stretch of the Tyrrhenian. The ferries run full, the hydrofoil queues stretch along the quay, and the same photograph of the Faraglioni comes back from every phone. There is a reason for it: the Bay of Naples is one of the great sights of Europe. It is also, from June to September, extremely full.
The park does not stop at the famous view. The Monti Lattari rise directly behind the shoreline, and the towns pinned to their southern flank belong as much to the mountain as to the sea, with mule paths, chestnut woods and terraces above the coast road. Each of the towns here sits inside that regional park, and each holds a restaurant the most demanding of the guides has thought worth listing. Fewer people go up; the food is up there too.
Of the 27 communes we have mapped in the province of Salerno, 10 qualify as towns inside a nature park with a serious restaurant: each sits inside a regional nature park, and each holds a restaurant listed by the most demanding of the guides. The smallest, Conca dei Marini, has 664 residents.
Two more lists worth reading alongside this one: The best small towns inside a nature park in the province of Salerno and The best towns known for what they grow within 45 minutes of Salerno.
Why visit Conca dei Marini
Conca dei Marini sits between Amalfi and Furore on the Tyrrhenian coast, a fold of stone houses around the marina and the promontory above it. According to local tradition the settlement was founded as Cossa by the Etruscans and taken by Rome in 272 BC.
The village divides between the clifftop, where the watchtower and the former monastery stand on their spur, and the water's edge, where the parish chapel sits on a rocky outcrop above the fishing cove. Below the road, accessible by stairs or by boat, the sea cave glows green from an underwater fissure.
The village has 664 residents and stays cooler than Amalfi in August. What holds the place together is the drop from cliff to water: a settlement built in a fold of stone that turned its isolation into a pantry, a lookout, and a hiding place for a green cave, and stayed small enough that all three remain within reach of each other.
Il Refettorio is listed in the MICHELIN Guide and Gambero Rosso.
What to see in Conca dei Marini
- Grotta dello Smeraldo. 45 by 32 meters of water surface, reached by stairs from the road or by boat from the marina below the village.
- Torre di Capo di Conca. On the promontory above the marina, part of the coastal defense network commissioned by the viceroy of Naples.
- Monastero di Santa Rosa. Former Dominican convent on a clifftop spur, founded 1681; the building is now a luxury hotel.
How to get to Conca dei Marini
Salerno is about 34 min away by road.
Our tip
May, June, September and October are the months to come. The sea is warm enough for the grotto boats to run reliably, the coastal road is open, and the Santa Rosa is celebrated on 2 August with a new sfogliatella reinterpretation each year by a guest pastry chef. July and August push the SS163 coastal road into single-file traffic from morning to night; locals walk between the marina and the upper village rather than driving.
Why visit Furore
Furore stretches up the cliff between Praiano and Conca dei Marini on the UNESCO-listed Costiera Amalfitana, six hundred and eighty-eight people across houses that don't share a single piazza. The main settlement sits at 300 meters in the upper Vallone del Furore; the commune drops to sea level at the Fiordo di Furore, a narrow ria carved by the Schiato torrent that flows down from Agerola at 550 meters.
The historian Matteo Camera traced the name to the roar storms make through the gorge. Since the early 1980s the painter Silvio Vetrano's project Il Paese Dipinto has invited artists each September to paint murals on the village walls, which is why Furore is sometimes called the painted village or the village that doesn't exist.
The commune is a Borgo più bello d'Italia and a Città del Vino: the Fiorduva white from the Marisa Cuomo winery is grown on terraces above the fjord.
Bluh Furore (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Hostaria Baccofurore (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso) and Melchiò (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.
What to see in Furore
- Fiordo di Furore. Narrow ria cut by the Schiato torrent, southern Italy's only fjord, with a stone bridge crossed by the SS163 and a pebble beach below.
- Il Paese Dipinto. Open-air mural circuit started in 1980 by Silvio Vetrano, with new works added each September by invited Italian and international artists.
- Chiesa di Sant'Elia Profeta. Parish church on the upper part of the village, with a majolica-tiled dome and a small square overlooking the terraces below.
How to get to Furore
Salerno is about 36 min away by road.
Our tip
May, June, September and early October are the strongest months on this stretch of the Amalfi Coast. The sea climbs past twenty degrees, the SS163 buses run on a working timetable, and the Fiordo di Furore beach is accessible without a queue. July and August are full: the day-trippers come up from Amalfi and the small parking pockets on the SS163 fill before nine.
Why visit Atrani
Atrani sits in a narrow ravine between Amalfi and Ravello on the Tyrrhenian coast, twelve hectares total, the smallest commune in Italy by land area. Eight hundred residents live in stone houses stacked up the gorge, connected by stairs and tunnels rather than streets.
The first written record is a letter from Pope Gregory I to the Bishop of Amalfi in 596 AD. Within the maritime Duchy of Amalfi, Atrani was the seat of the aristocracy: the doges were crowned in the Chiesa di San Salvatore de' Birecto, named for the birecto, the cloth cap of office handed to each new ruler.
The piazza, Piazza Umberto I, sits beside the sea behind a low arch. The Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher visited in the 1930s and made Atrani the model for the impossible architecture of his Metamorphosis series.
The town today survives on day-trippers from Amalfi and a quieter overnight crowd that finds the steps.
A' Paranza is listed in the MICHELIN Guide and Gambero Rosso.
What to see in Atrani
- Collegiata di Santa Maria Maddalena. Baroque parish church above the village, with majolica dome and a panoramic terrace overlooking the gorge and the sea.
- Chiesa di San Salvatore de' Birecto. Tenth-century church on Piazza Umberto I where the doges of the Amalfi maritime republic were crowned and invested with the birecto.
- Piazza Umberto I. Small arcaded square behind a sea arch, the social center of the village, served as M.C. Escher's model for several Metamorphosis prints.
How to get to Atrani
Salerno is about 26 min away by road.
Our tip
May, June, September and October are the months that work. The light is long, the sea is warm enough for swimming, and the tunnel down to the beach doesn't bottleneck. July and August push thirty degrees and the day-tripper traffic from Amalfi spills into the piazza after lunch.
Why visit Cetara
Cetara sits at the eastern end of the Amalfi Coast on a narrow inlet between Vietri sul Mare and Maiori, 17 kilometers from Salerno. Saracen pirates established a base here in 879 AD and made repeated raids west along the coast; in 1534 the corsair Sinan Pasha sacked the village and took roughly 300 inhabitants as slaves to North Africa.
The viceregal watchtower above the beach, Torre di Cetara, was rebuilt in the 16th century as part of the coastal defense system commissioned from Naples; it now holds the civic museum of local painters known as the costaioli. Cetara remains the working fishing village of the coast, with a tuna and anchovy fleet still based in the small port.
Colatura di alici, the amber anchovy sauce descended from Roman garum and revived in the Middle Ages by local monks, is still aged in chestnut barrels in the cellars; it received DOP status in 2020. The Chiesa di San Pietro Apostolo on the marina, with its yellow majolica dome, is the visual signature of the village.
La Dispensa di Armatore (MICHELIN) and Al Convento (L'Espresso and MICHELIN) are listed in food guides.
What to see in Cetara
- Torre Vicereale. Sixteenth-century viceregal watchtower rebuilt after the 1534 Saracen sack, restored in 2011 and now holding the civic museum of the costaioli painters.
- Chiesa di San Pietro Apostolo. Ninth-century parish church on the marina rebuilt in Baroque style, with a yellow majolica dome that signs the village from the sea.
- Convento di San Francesco. Fourteenth-century Franciscan convent above the port, with a small cloister and a sea-facing terrace, now used for civic events.
How to get to Cetara
Salerno is about 17 min away by road.
Our tip
May, June, September and October are the months Cetara reads best. The fleet runs daily, the festivals around the colatura and the tuna catch land in the warm shoulders, and the SS163 between Vietri and Maiori is open without high-summer queues. July and August fill the small marina and the pebble beaches to either side of the breakwater.
Why visit Praiano
Praiano spreads along a ridge that drops from Monte Sant'Angelo a Tre Pizzi, at 1,444 meters, to the sea, midway between Positano and Amalfi. The Romans called it Plagianum, from the Latin for open sea, a name that fits a town with no single center but a string of settlements strung along the slope.
Vettica Maggiore holds the parish church and the main piazza toward the Positano side. Below the ridge, reached by stairs, Marina di Praia is the only rocky break in the cliffs where boats can land, and the Africana nightclub is cut into the rock above the water.
On the higher ground toward Amalfi, the church and convent mark where the coastal path leaves the town and climbs into the mountain. Gavitella, reached by its own stairway, faces west and keeps the sun after other beaches on this stretch have lost it.
The commune's history as a doges' retreat and Saracen watch post sits above all of this, on the headlands, looking down at a settlement pattern that has changed little: a summer base up high, a working landing below, and a single natural inlet standing in for a harbor. UNESCO listed the Costiera Amalfitana in 1997.
Un Piano nel Cielo (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Franchino (MICHELIN), Gala Maris dell'Hotel Alfonso a Mare (Gambero Rosso) and 1 more place are listed in food guides.
What to see in Praiano
- Chiesa di San Gennaro. Parish church of Vettica Maggiore completed in 1602, Latin-cross plan with three naves, majolica-tiled dome and central barrel vault with lunettes.
- Marina di Praia. Narrow rocky inlet at the foot of Capo Sottile, the historic landing place of Praiano, with the Africana sea-cave nightclub carved into the cliff.
- Santa Maria a Castro e San Domenico. Medieval church and adjoining convent at 364 meters on the slope of Sant'Angelo a Tre Pizzi, with frescoes and a wide view over the coast.
How to get to Praiano
Salerno is about 42 min away by road.
Our tip
May through September is the season the coast was built for: warm water, open trattorias and the Sentiero degli Dei walkable end to end. July and August push past thirty degrees and the SS163 fills, but Praiano is calmer than Positano five kilometers west. The Gavitella beach catches the late sun and stays busy until dusk.
Why visit Ravello
Ravello sits on a spur above the Amalfi Coast, between the valleys of the Dragone and the Reginna Minor, 782 stairs up from Atrani at sea level. The village grew rich in the 12th and 13th centuries as a satellite of the Amalfi maritime republic, when patrician families like the Rufolo, Confalone and d'Afflitto built their houses on the ridge to escape the coastal raids.
The upper village holds the older churches and the social life of the piazza; the villas that made the town's later reputation sit toward the cliff edge, their gardens and belvederes facing the water. One villa's garden was seen by Richard Wagner in 1880 and identified by him with Klingsor's enchanted garden in his opera Parsifal, and he wrote the opera's second act on the strength of it.
The Ravello Festival began playing orchestral concerts in that same garden in 1953, the year the council decided to use Wagner's visit to rebuild a postwar economy. The town's shape, ridge above, stairs down to the coast, patrician houses turned toward the sea, is the record of why families climbed here in the first place and what they built once they had reason to stay.
Rossellinis (MICHELIN), Il Flauto di Pan (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Belvedere dell'Hotel Caruso (Gambero Rosso) and 1 more place are listed in food guides.
What to see in Ravello
- Villa Rufolo. Patrician residence built 1270 with Moorish cloister and terraced gardens; setting for the Ravello Festival concerts and the second act of Wagner's Parsifal.
- Villa Cimbrone. Cliff-edge villa restored after 1904 by Lord Grimthorpe, ending in the Terrazza dell'Infinito, a marble belvedere over the Gulf of Salerno.
- Duomo di Ravello. Cathedral on Piazza Vescovado, founded 1086, with the bronze portal cast by Barisano da Trani in 1179 and the marble pulpit signed by Niccolò di Bartolomeo da Foggia in 1272.
How to get to Ravello
Salerno is about 33 min away by road.
Our tip
May, June, September and early October are the months Ravello reads best. The temperature on the ridge runs three to five degrees cooler than on the coast below, the festival concerts on the Villa Rufolo belvedere run from late June through August, and the gardens are full without the day-tripper bus queues of high summer. July and August fill the SITA bus from Amalfi and the road up the Dragone valley, and the festival's evening concerts under the stars are the reason most overnight visitors come.
Why visit Positano
Positano is built on the rugged limestone of the Lattari Mountains, which is why locals call it the città verticale: the ground itself will not allow a level street in the centro storico, and every path either climbs or descends. The settlement grew from the ninth century around the Benedictine monastery that kept the icon, and the frazione of Nocelle above the town shows how far the climb goes, linked to the coast below by the ridge trail rather than by road.
After being sacked by Pisa in the thirteenth century, the town fortified itself with watchtowers and prospered as a small fish-trading port, a working settlement long before it was a resort. The twentieth century made it a writer's refuge: John Steinbeck described it in Harper's Bazaar in 1953 as a dream place that isn't quite real.
Today Positano runs almost entirely on summer tourism, with a UNESCO Amalfi Coast inscription and a Bandiera Blu beach. The vertical geography that once forced fishermen and monks onto narrow terraces is the same feature now sold as a view: the town's difficulty of ground became its main asset.
Li Galli (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Zass (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), Next2 (MICHELIN) and 7 more places are listed in food guides.
What to see in Positano
- Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta. Majolica tiled dome over the church around which the village grew, the icon inside marking the spot where the sailors are said to have set the Madonna down.
- Spiaggia Grande. Main pebble beach below the centro storico, the postcard image of the Amalfi Coast, with the pastel facades of the village rising directly above the sand.
- Sentiero degli Dei. Path of the Gods, the high ridge trail of the Monti Lattari from Agerola to Nocelle, a frazione of Positano, with the Faraglioni of Capri offshore.
How to get to Positano
Salerno is about 54 min away by road.
Our tip
May, June and September are the open months on the Amalfi Coast, water warm enough for swimming and the road still navigable. July and August fill the village past capacity, with day boats running from Capri and Sorrento and the SS163 backed up for hours; locals avoid the centro storico between eleven and four. April and October stay quiet, with the Path of the Gods at its best and the town easier to walk.
Why visit Amalfi
Amalfi sits at the mouth of a deep gorge in the Lattari mountains, six meters above the sea, four thousand seven hundred and twenty-nine people on a stretch of coast that carries its name. The town was capital of a duchy trading with Byzantium, North Africa and the Levant before Pisa and Venice eclipsed it, and the Tavola Amalfitana, drawn up here, codified Mediterranean maritime law in the Middle Ages for ships far beyond this shore.
The gorge structures the town as much as the sea does: the centro is stacked on the narrow flat ground at the gorge's mouth, the cathedral staircase climbing straight up from the piazza, while the valley behind runs inland and upward, its stream once turning the wheels of the paper mills before the water reaches the harbor below. Upper gorge and lower marina were parts of one working town, the water dropping from the mills to the boatyards to the sea.
The coast was UNESCO-listed in 1997 and the commune is Cittaslow. What made Amalfi a capital was the same terrain that now makes it a resort: a sheltered cut in the mountains with deep water at its foot, close enough to the sea to build ships and drawn up on to the rock to keep the town off the water's threat.
Pasticceria Pansa Andrea (Locali Storici), Il Glicine (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso), La Caravella dal 1959 (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso) and 5 more places are listed in food guides.
What to see in Amalfi
- Cattedrale di Sant'Andrea. Romanesque facade at the top of the staircase, with the Chiostro del Paradiso attached to one side, striped stone and interlaced arches around a cloister garden.
- Museo della Carta. Paper museum in the Valle dei Mulini, set inside a thirteenth-century working mill where the machinery for hand-forming sheets is still operated.
- Arsenale della Repubblica. Twelfth-century stone-vaulted shipyard near the marina, the only surviving naval arsenal of the four Italian maritime republics.
How to get to Amalfi
Salerno is about 35 min away by road.
Our tip
May, June, September and early October are the strongest months. The sea climbs past twenty degrees, the ferries to Capri and Positano run on full schedules, and the SS163 cliff road moves before and after the day-trip peak. July and August are full: the town fills with day-trippers arriving by bus, ferry and private boat, and the duomo steps become a queue between ten and four.
Why visit Maiori
Maiori sits at the mouth of the Reginna torrent between Minori and Cetara, the widest valley on the Amalfi Coast and the only flat ground on the strip. A wall of medieval houses rose up the gorge until the night of 26 October 1954, when a freak storm dropped 500 millimeters of rain on the Lattari ridge in twelve hours.
The torrent swept the centro storico, the lemon terraces and several streets into the sea, killing over 80 people. The town was rebuilt with a rare straight grid behind a kilometer-long beach of volcanic sand, the longest on the coast.
The Castello di San Nicola de Thoro-Plano sits on the ridge above, 11th-century walls part-ruined since the Anjou siege. The Collegiata di Santa Maria a Mare, 13th-century with a green and yellow majolica dome, survived the flood and looks out from the hill.
Roberto Rossellini shot Paisà, Voyage in Italy and Il Miracolo here in the late 1940s.
Oltremare is listed in the MICHELIN Guide and Gambero Rosso.
What to see in Maiori
- Collegiata di Santa Maria a Mare. Thirteenth-century parish church on the hill, three-aisle neoclassical interior with gilded coffered ceiling and green-and-yellow majolica dome.
- Castello di San Nicola de Thoro-Plano. Eleventh-century fortress in partial ruin on the ridge above town, with views over the Reginna valley and the coast east to Capo d'Orso.
- Spiaggia di Maiori. Kilometer-long beach of volcanic sand, the longest on the Amalfi Coast, replanted with palms behind the seawall after the 1954 flood.
How to get to Maiori
Salerno is about 22 min away by road.
Our tip
May, June, September and early October are the months Maiori is set up for. The long beach absorbs more visitors than the cove towns nearby, the SITA bus connects west to Amalfi and east to Salerno, and the Sentiero dei Limoni is open without the heat. July and August fill the kilometer of sand and push every restaurant on the lungomare to two evening shifts.
Why visit Vietri sul Mare
Vietri sul Mare sits at 80 meters at the eastern end of the Costiera Amalfitana, the most populous commune of the UNESCO-listed coastline, separated from the port of Salerno by a single harbor wall. The polychrome ceramics tradition is documented from the ninth century, with a generally agreed start around the fifteenth, and the industrial scale-up came in the 1920s and 1930s when a small group of German émigré artists settled in the workshops and brought the bestiary-and-floral pottery the town still produces.
The Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista, sixteenth century, has a green-and-yellow majolica dome that has become the town's signature image. Vietri is the only Amalfi Coast commune that holds Borghi più belli d'Italia and UNESCO together, and is a member of the Città della Ceramica network.
The marina at Marina di Vietri and the cliffside frazione of Raito and Albori sit below and above the centro on the same slope.
Volta del Fuenti by Michele De Blasio (MICHELIN and Gambero Rosso) and Pascalò (Gambero Rosso) are listed in food guides.
What to see in Vietri sul Mare
- Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista. Sixteenth-century parish church with a green-and-yellow majolica dome and a bell tower of polychrome tiles, the most photographed image of the town.
- Museo Provinciale della Ceramica. Ceramic museum in Villa Guariglia at Raito, with Vietri pieces from the seventeenth century through the German-period 1920s and after.
- Albori. Cliffside frazione above the centro, also a Borgo più bello d'Italia, with stone houses, lanes, and views over the Gulf of Salerno.
How to get to Vietri sul Mare
It has its own railway station. Salerno is about 16 min away by road. The full route from Naples.
Our tip
May, June, September and early October are the strongest months. The water along the Marina di Vietri climbs past twenty degrees, the SS163 west to Cetara and Maiori runs without the gridlock of high summer, and the ceramic workshops keep their full hours. July and August are full: day-trippers arrive from Salerno on the local train and the Marina parking fills before mid-morning.
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