The Amalfi Coast — the SS163 highway clinging to 50 kilometres of cliff above the Tyrrhenian Sea between Positano and Salerno — is one of the most beautiful and one of the most over-touristed stretches of coastline in Europe. The cliff towns of Positano and Ravello have become extraordinary, but they're also extraordinarily expensive and crowded. The hidden Amalfi Coast is the one you find when you leave the main road: the trails through lemon groves above the towns, the villages in the mountains behind, the small beaches accessible only by boat or path, and the stretch of coast east of Amalfi that receives perhaps a tenth of the traffic of the western end.
This guide is for the traveller who is willing to walk. Most of the best places on the Amalfi Coast require either a 20-minute path down a cliff or a 10-minute boat ride — the exact distances that filter out the day-trippers and leave the good places for the people who make the effort. Bring walking shoes, water, and the flexibility to change plans when the trail leads somewhere you didn't expect.
The coast is at its finest in May, early June, September, and October — the light is extraordinary, the sea is warm enough, and the roads have not yet reached the gridlock that characterises July and August. If you must go in August, start every day at 7am and have a plan for the midday heat that doesn't involve standing on the SS163.
1. The Path of the Gods (Sentiero degli Dei)
The Sentiero degli Dei is a walking path along the ridge above the Amalfi Coast, connecting Agerola with Nocelle (above Positano) through 7.5 kilometres of spectacular mountain trail with continuous views of the sea below. The views are from 600 metres above the water, looking down on the entire coast — Positano, the Faraglioni islands of Capri on the horizon, the arc of the bay curving toward Salerno. It is, by general consensus, the finest hike in southern Italy.
The path follows ancient mule tracks used for centuries to connect the mountain villages with the fishing communities below. The trail is well-marked (red and white CAI blazes) and clearly maintained, but it's a mountain path with exposed sections and significant elevation changes. The eastern section, from Agerola, is the most dramatic; the western descent to Nocelle the most scenic. The full trail takes 3.5–4.5 hours depending on pace and photo stops.
Reach Agerola by bus from Amalfi (SITA bus, approximately 45 minutes, €2.50) or by car (park in Agerola and arrange a taxi back from Nocelle). The trail begins in the village of Bomerano, a frazione of Agerola — walk from the bus stop. From Nocelle, a long (1,800-step) staircase descends to Positano. The local bus then returns to Amalfi (or Sorrento) from Positano.
Start by 9am at the latest in summer to finish before the afternoon heat. Bring 2 litres of water, sunscreen, and a layer for the exposed ridgeline. The trail has no formal refreshment stops — bring a packed lunch or buy provisions at the alimentari in Bomerano before setting out. The bar in Nocelle at the end of the trail serves cold water and beer to arriving hikers and the family who run it greet you as if you've accomplished something, which you have.
2. Cetara Village
Cetara, on the eastern end of the Amalfi Coast, is a small fishing village that has remained more genuinely local than any other settlement on the coast — it's less dramatically positioned than Positano or Ravello and lacks a UNESCO heritage designation, which means the tourist buses stop more briefly. What Cetara has instead is a working fishing fleet, the finest tuna fishing tradition in Campania, and the production of colatura di alici (anchovy fish sauce) that has been made here since at least the 13th century and is one of the great condiments of Italian cuisine.
The colatura is made by salting anchovies in terracotta vessels and allowing them to ferment for up to three years. The amber liquid that drains off is colatura — intensely savoury, complex, oceanic. It's used in pasta, over vegetables, and with fish throughout the region, and the Cetara version is considered the finest in Italy. You can buy it directly from the producers in the village and the price difference from what you'd pay at a gourmet shop in Milan or London is startling.
Reach Cetara by SITA bus from Amalfi (approximately 25 minutes east on the SS163, €1.50). The village has a small beach, a Saracen watchtower visible from the water, and a main street of about 200 metres. The shop beside the port sells colatura, conserved anchovies, and tuna in olive oil directly from local producers. A 100ml bottle of colatura costs €8–12 here; the equivalent in a specialty food shop in the UK or US costs €25+.
The restaurant San Pietro in Cetara is the finest place to eat colatura — the spaghetti alla colatura di alici (€14) is the definitive version. Arrive before noon or after 2pm to avoid any queue (the restaurant is small). The beach at Cetara is narrow but not crowded by Amalfi Coast standards; the water is clear and the tower at the east end of the beach provides shade in the afternoon. The village is most beautiful in the evening when the fishing boats return and the cats come out to supervise the unloading.
3. Valle delle Ferriere Nature Reserve
Behind the town of Amalfi, the Valle delle Ferriere follows a mountain stream up into a narrow gorge of extraordinary beauty — waterfalls, ancient fern species surviving from before the last ice age, abandoned iron mills, and a freshwater swimming hole that is one of the finest natural spots on the entire coast. Most visitors to Amalfi stand on the main piazza and look at the Cathedral. Fewer than 10% walk 20 minutes east to the mouth of the valley.
The valley takes its name from the iron mills (ferriere) that operated here from the medieval period through the 19th century — the stream provided the water power, and the mills produced iron goods for the coastal trade. The ruins of the last mill are visible about 2 kilometres up the valley. The botanical interest is significant: the ferns that survive in the humid gorge include Woodwardia radicans, a species so ancient it predates the last glaciation and was once widespread across Europe, now surviving only in relict populations in humid Atlantic and Mediterranean microhabitats.
Walk east from Amalfi town along Via Genova, following the signs to Valle delle Ferriere. The path begins paved, becomes a dirt track, and then a rocky trail — good shoes required. The full walk to the top of the valley and back takes 3–4 hours. The swimming hole is about 45 minutes in — a natural pool beneath a waterfall, cold and clear, surrounded by dripping ferns. There are no facilities and no admission fee.
The walk is best done in spring when the waterfalls are full and the vegetation lush, or in September when the heat has moderated. In July and August, start before 8am — the gorge is narrow and the morning shade lasts longer. Wear water shoes or be prepared to wade in places where the path crosses the stream. The local forestry authority occasionally closes the trail after heavy rain — check at the Amalfi tourist office before setting out.
4. Atrani Village
Atrani is immediately east of Amalfi — so close that many visitors walk through it without realising they've entered a separate municipality. It's the smallest commune in southern Italy, built into a narrow ravine with a tiny beach, a medieval square barely large enough for twenty people, and an atmosphere that is genuinely village rather than tourist resort. The Piazza Umberto I, with its fountain and its church of San Salvatore, is one of the most perfectly proportioned small squares in Italy.
Atrani was once the aristocratic town of the Amalfi Republic — the doges of Amalfi lived and were crowned here. The churches contain remarkable medieval artwork, including a 10th-century bronze door on the church of San Salvatore. The village's population is about 900 people, and the beach (a small strip of dark sand between the two headlands) is used primarily by local families rather than tourists. The handful of restaurants and bars serve at local prices because they're primarily serving locals.
Walk the coastal path from Amalfi — 10 minutes, signed. Or take the ferry: Atrani has its own ferry stop on the Amalfi Coast service. The beach is small and can fill up on summer weekends; come early morning for space. The Da Gemma restaurant on the main square has been feeding Atrani residents since 1872 and serves Campanian classics (pasta e fagioli, grilled fish, fried vegetables) at restaurant prices that feel like bar prices by Positano standards.
The evening is the best time in Atrani — when the Amalfi day-trippers have left and the piazza belongs to the people who live on it. Old men play cards under the loggia; children chase cats around the fountain; someone is always cooking something with garlic. The bar on the square sells spritz for €4 and the owner will talk to you about the history of the village for as long as you're willing to listen, which should be a while.
5. Ravello Villa Rufolo Gardens at Dawn
Ravello is the mountain town above Amalfi famous for its gardens, its music festival, and the view from its clifftop belvedere that Wagner called the "garden of Klingsor" for its unearthly beauty. Most visitors arrive on the tourist bus mid-morning and follow the well-worn circuit. Come instead at 9am when the Villa Rufolo gardens open, before the groups arrive, and walk among the roses and bougainvillea with the sea 350 metres below and nothing between you and the horizon but air.
The Villa Rufolo was built by the wealthy Rufolo family in the 13th century and passed through multiple owners before becoming a public garden in the 19th century. Wagner visited in 1880 while working on Parsifal and was so moved by the belvedere view that he set the flower garden scene of the opera here. The annual Ravello Festival, running since 1953, performs Wagner's work on the clifftop stage with the sea as backdrop — the most spectacular opera venue in the world.
Ravello is reached by SITA bus from Amalfi (25 minutes, €1.30) or by taxi (expensive). The Villa Rufolo is on Piazza Duomo, in the centre of the village. Open daily from 9am; closing time varies by season (9am–6pm in winter, 9am–8pm in summer). Admission €7. The gardens are not large — a full visit takes 45 minutes — but the view from the belvedere compensates for any brevity.
The adjacent Villa Cimbrone (separate admission, €8) has a similarly extraordinary belvedere — the Terrazza dell'Infinito (Terrace of Infinity), lined with marble busts, looking south over the coast toward Salerno. It's a 10-minute walk from the Piazza Duomo and worth visiting on the same morning. Both gardens are at their finest in May when the roses are blooming; October is beautiful for the autumn light and dramatically reduced crowds. The café on Piazza Duomo opens at 8am and the espresso — consumed while waiting for the gardens to open — is excellent.
6. The Lemon Grove Trail Above Maiori
Maiori is the coast's broadest beach — less dramatic than Positano but also less crowded, with a flat seafront, an esplanade, and a genuine local life that the more photographed towns have sacrificed to tourism. Behind Maiori, a network of mule tracks climbs through the terraced lemon groves to the village of Ravello above — a 3-hour walk that is less well-known than the Sentiero degli Dei and more intimate in scale, passing through working agricultural terraces where the sfusato amalfitano lemon (the enormous, sweet, thick-rinded variety used for limoncello) grows at head height on either side of the path.
The lemon groves of the Amalfi Coast are maintained on terraces carved into the cliffs over the centuries by a process of extraordinary labour — every terrace is supported by a dry-stone wall, every lemon tree individually staked, the entire system irrigated by channels fed from the mountain springs above. The smell of lemon blossom in April and May, trapped in the steep valley between the terrace walls, is one of the most extraordinary natural scents on earth. The lemons themselves ripen from December through May.
The trail begins behind Maiori town, signed toward Ravello — ask at the tourist office on the seafront for the current best route (trail conditions change with weather). Allow 3 hours up and 2 down. Alternative: take the bus from Amalfi to Ravello and walk down through the lemons to Maiori (mostly downhill, 2–2.5 hours). The path occasionally passes through private farming land — close gates behind you and don't pick the lemons, which are someone's income.
Completely free. Buy a lemon at a roadside stall in Maiori before you start (€0.50 for a locally grown sfusato, which you can squeeze into your water bottle) and save it for the halfway viewpoint. The view from the ridge between Maiori and Ravello looks north into the mountains and south over the coast — a panorama that doesn't appear in any tourist brochure because the tourist infrastructure hasn't caught up with it yet. Descend to Maiori for a seafront lunch; the restaurant Il Pennino on the esplanade does a proper fritto misto for €14.
7. Praiano Village
Praiano is between Positano and Amalfi on the SS163 — most day-trippers drive straight through, stopping only to let the occasional bus past. But Praiano has a real village life, a spectacular church with a vertical campanile visible from the sea, a cove with a fishing jetty and a boat bar that serves the freshest catch on the coast, and the Grotta dello Smeraldo — an accessible sea cave filled with turquoise light that is both famous and somehow always overlooked relative to Capri's Blue Grotto.
The village clings to the cliff around the church of San Gennaro — the square in front of it, 300 metres above the sea with the coast visible in both directions, is one of the finest public spaces on the Amalfi Coast and is populated primarily by local residents. The cove below (Marina di Praia) is reached by a steep staircase and has a small beach of dark sand, a restaurant, and several fishing boats available for hire. The fishermen at the jetty will take you to the Grotta dello Smeraldo by boat for €10 per person — significantly cheaper than the organised tour from Amalfi.
Reach Praiano by bus from Amalfi (20 minutes, €1.30) or Positano (15 minutes). The village church square is on the road; the descent to Marina di Praia is signed. The Grotta dello Smeraldo is accessible by lift from the SS163 (€5 admission) or by boat from Marina di Praia — the boat approach is more dramatic and the light inside is better because you enter at water level. Inside the cave, an underwater nativity scene has been installed — the figures are visible through the clear water and it's genuinely extraordinary.
The restaurant at Marina di Praia — Ristorante La Gavitella — serves the freshest fish on the coast (the owner goes out on the boat himself and brings back what he catches). Lunch runs €20–30 per person. The cove is small and the beach fills by 11am in summer; arrive early or swim off the rocks at the jetty end. The evening, when the boats are back and the sun is behind the western cliffs, is the most beautiful time here — the light turns the water a deep electric blue.
8. Scala Village and the Chestnut Forests
Scala is the village directly across the valley from Ravello — connected by a footpath that descends to the valley floor and climbs back up, offering the finest views of Ravello that exist from any publicly accessible point. Scala itself is smaller, older, and almost entirely unvisited: its Romanesque cathedral dates from 1266, its streets are medieval in width and character, and its surrounding chestnut forests — source of the wild chestnuts that appear in Campanian cuisine every autumn — are extraordinary in October when the colour turns.
The medieval cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Scala has a portal of extraordinary carved stonework (12th century) and a crypt with early Christian sarcophagi. The apse contains a 13th-century mosaic that is one of the finest pieces of medieval art on the Amalfi Coast and which almost nobody visits. The village has perhaps 1,500 inhabitants and the only restaurant (Ristorante da Lorenzo) serves whatever the owner has available that day — the concept of a menu is flexible, the food is excellent, the cost is €12–15 per head.
Reach Scala by bus from Amalfi (SITA bus toward Tramonti, alight at Scala, approximately 30 minutes). The footpath to Ravello descends steeply from the village and crosses the valley via a series of terraced paths and staircases — allow 45 minutes each way and wear shoes with grip. The view from the path at the halfway point, with Ravello hanging above the valley on one side and Scala on the other, with the sea visible through the cleft between the two ridges, is genuinely extraordinary.
The autumn chestnut harvest (ottobre to novembre) is celebrated with the Sagra della Castagna — a chestnut festival involving roasting, sweet chestnut preparations, and local wine. The exact dates vary by year; check with the Amalfi Coast tourist information. The chestnut forests themselves are accessible from Scala and from the villages of Tramonti further inland — free to walk through, extraordinary in golden October light, completely empty of tourists.
9. Vietri sul Mare Ceramics Quarter
Vietri sul Mare is the eastern gateway to the Amalfi Coast — the first or last town depending on direction, often driven through quickly. But Vietri has been a centre of ceramic production since the 13th century and its historic centre (away from the tourist shops on the main road) has a ceramics tradition of genuine sophistication: the distinctive Vietri style, with its vivid yellows, blues, and greens and its folk imagery of fish, fishing boats, and geometric patterns, is recognisable across Italy and exported worldwide. The best workshops are in the historic Raito neighbourhood above the town.
The ceramics industry at Vietri employs most of the town's artisan economy and the best pieces are made in small family workshops that welcome visitors with no obligation to buy. The Museo della Ceramica in the Villa Guariglia at Raito has an excellent collection of historic pieces tracing the style's development from its Moorish and Spanish colonial influences to the contemporary production (€3, closed Tuesday). The workshop of Ceramica Solimene on Via Madonna degli Angeli is famous for its extraordinary factory building designed by Paolo Soleri (the Arizona architect) in 1954 — a Gaudi-esque structure of spheres and organic forms that is a masterpiece of mid-20th-century design.
Reach Vietri by SITA bus from Amalfi (30 minutes) or by the Circumsalernitana train from Salerno (10 minutes, €1.30 — Salerno is 1 hour from Naples Centrale by fast train). The historic Raito neighbourhood is uphill from the main road — walk up Via Nuova Raito from the main piazza. The Ceramica Solimene building is signed from the main road and its interior showroom is free to enter (and the prices are better than the tourist shops near the port).
Budget €20–50 for ceramics shopping if you're serious about bringing pieces home. The mugs, plates, and tiles are genuinely beautiful and the quality from the smaller workshops is significantly higher than the mass-produced versions sold in tourist shops along the coast. Shipping arrangements can be made for larger purchases. The café beside the museum serves an excellent granita di limone (lemon slush, €2) — an essential summer refreshment after the steep walk up from the main road.
10. Furore Fiord and the Invisible Village
Furore is a village of 800 people that doesn't appear to exist at road level — the town is scattered across the mountain cliffs above the SS163, connected by steep staircases, with no flat ground and no conventional village centre. What you see from the road is a tiny fiord — a narrow coastal inlet between two headlands that was carved by a mountain stream — with a small beach accessible only by staircases from the road above. The fiord hosts an annual diving competition (the World High Diving Championship, held each July) and is one of the most dramatically beautiful small landscapes on the coast.
The fiord beach is reached by descending two staircases from the SS163, passing through a road tunnel. The total descent takes about 10 minutes. The beach is tiny — space for perhaps 30 people — with dark volcanic sand and extraordinarily clear water. The two cliffs framing it are covered in fishing nets draped to dry and the weathered wooden fishing boat sheds (gozzi) that were traditionally used to store the fiord fishing boats. The whole scene is painted with murals by Italian artists as part of a village public art project.
Stop on the SS163 at the signed Furore fiord stop (there's a small car park) or access by SITA bus. The beach is free; no facilities except a small bar that operates seasonally. The village of Furore proper is reached by a different road winding up from the main highway — the handful of scattered houses, a Baroque church, a family-run winery (Marisa Cuomo winery, producer of the finest Costa d'Amalfi DOC wines, visits by appointment), and the municipal art gallery constitute the village. The Marisa Cuomo winery on Via Lama 14 produces the Furore bianco and rosso that are among the great wines of Campania — arranging a visit and tasting (€15–20 per person) is one of the finest things you can do on the coast.
