The Enduring Charm of Italy’s Positano – Then and Now

Reflections on John Steinbeck’s 1953 Harper’s Bazaar Article

Positano, the world’s most photographed fishing village, shines as the jewel of Italy’s Amalfi Coast. Its houses, built up the steep side of a towering hill, put every square inch to good use. Lush bougainvillea cascades over concrete walls. One narrow street winds up to the top of town where visitors can take in captivating views of the Tyrrhenian Sea below. The rest of the town is crisscrossed with stairs and steps, “some as steep as ladders,” wrote John Steinbeck in his famous 1953 travel essay in Harper’s Bazaar.

“Positano,” writes Steinbeck, “bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.” That was true then and remains true today. Positano has a way of weaving a spell over visitors, enchanting them when they arrive and haunting them after they leave.

This small town of 4,000 is, for once, every bit as picturesque as the travel guides describe it. It beguiles and beckons, making you want to stay.

Positano attracted large numbers of tourists after Steinbeck’s story made it famous. Many well-known artists, musicians, writers and stage and screen stars have visited or even made Positano their home, including Pablo Picasso, Lawrence Olivier, Paul Klee, and Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Renowned Italian movie director and producer, Franco Zeffirelli, lived in his Villa TreVille here for 35 years.

Today, the town is home to the same number of inhabitants as when Steinbeck visited. The locals – affectionately known as Positanesi – and their town, appear unmarked by modernity. Paradoxically, Steinbeck’s essay changed the town, except that it didn’t.

Steinbeck recognized the treasure he stumbled upon in Positano. In his essay, he warned, “Nearly always when you find a place as beautiful as Positano, your impulse is to conceal it.” In Steinbeck’s day, Positano was an unknown fishing village on the Amalfi Coast – and tourists were nowhere to be found. When he stayed here in 1953, he wrote that it was difficult to consider tourism an industry because “there are not enough (tourists).”

Today, tourists flock to Positano. Droves of them arrive by ferry from nearby Sorrento or Capri. Tour busses shuttle hundreds of tourists here every morning. The town quickly fills up. The more adventurous arrive by car as Steinbeck did, or even the public bus, on the State Highway 163. Hugging the mountainside, this scenic road of a thousand turns provides a never-ending panorama of views with each more stunning than the last.

Steinbeck’s wild ride into Positano is easily replicated today since the hazardous, narrow, cliffside road remains the same. In fact, traffic has increased since Steinbeck wrote his article. Our taxi ride from Sorrento was every bit the white-knuckle trip that Steinbeck experienced. As he wrote, the Amalfi Drive “is carefully designed to be a little narrower than two cars side by side,” and the centre line a mere suggestion. From ravine to ravine, Positano begins to beckon out your window, appearing and disappearing like a flirtatious coquette.

The perfect place to train for your next triathlon, Positano is built on a vertical axis, with endless staircases. It remains unchanged from the days when Steinbeck visited. Its houses still climb a hill “so steep it would be a cliff except that stairs are cut in it,” Steinbeck describes. The casual visitor needs to be in good shape to properly tour this town!

At the foot of town, Steinbeck found, “The small curving bay of unbelievably blue and green water laps gently on a beach of small pebbles.” Today, along the curve of beach, just in front of Marina Grande’s jumble of restaurants and bars, sunbeds are lined up side by side waiting for sun worshippers. Outdoor diners linger over a glass of Campari and plates of fried, herbed calamari, taking in the action on the small, crowded beach. From their tables, diners watch the ferries come and go.

There’s no shortage of restaurants or bars nestled up to the beach. They cascade one-on-top-of-the-other from the top of the hill, from where you can enjoy the view while sipping Asti Spumante.

Positano’s industry in Steinback’s day was fishing – anchovies and squids – with some shoemaking, carpentry, and arts and crafts thrown in.

Fishermen, once the dominant workforce, now function as a cooperative group, supplying local kitchens. Hardy fishermen are seen on the beach, cleaning the hulls of their colourful boats and mending their fishing nets throughout the day, seemingly oblivious to the surrounding throngs of tourists.

By night the tourists are gone and the lucky few that have booked lodging in Positano can enjoy the music and the stars and the uncrowded moonlit beaches.

Despite the unrelenting tourism, Positano’s chief export, its beauty and relaxed lifestyle, remain its most precious commodity. Positano is all about easy-come-elegance found in its restaurants, its food and its accommodations. Homey comforts can be found at La Fenice and super luxury can be had at Le Sirenuse, where Steinbeck stayed while writing his essay.

Looking out from the balcony of our apartment at La Fenice on the glistening Tyrrhenian Sea, the horizon, a constant straight line, we were mesmerized by the juxtaposition of deep ocean blue and light azure sky.

Huge, white, private luxury yachts anchored in the calm of the cove dwarf the local runabouts and smaller single-engine boats moored nearby. Looking like smaller versions of the giant passenger ferries, these boats seem uninhabited during the day, their tenders having delivered their upscale guests to the shore earlier in the day.

At night, their three or four storied decks light up so brightly the water near them glows. Some turn on underwater lights on floating stair cases, awaiting their tenders’ return from the town piers with guests that toured and dined in town. The yachts may not be there the next morning, disappearing like streamlined aquatic ghost ships in the night.

Clouds come and go as does the rain each day. Rubens could have painted the sky here. Weather in September seems tropical and humid. The pace of life here is best described as idle.

Visitors occupy a good part of their day by strolling narrow alleys lined with shops, or they sit in cafés, sipping espresso coffee. Multicoloured villas, hotels and casas are stacked up the hill. A church fronts the beach. Restaurants are nestled up against her lemon-coloured walls and dominated by her green and yellow, Moorish patterned, Majolica tiled dome.

Positano’s narrow streets are cut knifelike into the side of the cliff. They fill briefly with Vespa exhaust and echo with the strained buzz of small-motor scooter engines. With barely enough room for pedestrians, the sidewalks are crammed between the wrought iron fence at the edge of the cliff and the curb. Tourists and locals mix cheerfully alongside one another in their slow, downhill strolls to the seaside restaurants. The crosstown traverse is both uphill and down as the streets cling to the cliff contours.

Walking along Route 163 today, you can experience what Steinbeck didn’t in 1953. Buses almost too big for the winding road hacked out of the cliffside, blast their horns while blindly taking the hairpin turns, appear every two to three minutes.

Backpackers parade in single file along the cliff road ignoring the peril of the steep drop-off or the constant oncoming lines of cars, buses and motorcycles. Helmeted riders on motorcycles roar past, leaning low into each narrow turn of the roadway like angry hornets buzzing toward their nests. Occasionally, the deafening roar of an armada of enormous Harleys fills the air.

Despite these roadway perils, you can still see today how Positano bit deep into Steinbeck. The ocean view from the hotels, or even the tourist bus stop at the top of the hill, is stunning. When you’re here, you feel “it” – Positano’s bite. And we found that to be so true as we lounged our afternoons away at La Fenice, beside the saltwater pool overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea.

We met a guest from Istanbul who said she has been coming to Positano for years. Other travellers we met in town say the same thing. All return to Positano. Once the spell is cast, visitors can’t help returning again and again.

Such is the mesmeric timelessness of Positano as it was then for Steinbeck and as it is now. Except for the perpetual ebb and flow of tourists, it remains unmarked. An old destination that continues to renew its spectacular charms on waves of visitors daily.

IF YOU GO:

Stay at La Fenice – Bed & Breakfast, walking distance from town for amazing views of the sea or Le Sirenuse Hotel in town, made famous by Steinbeck.

Getting to Positano can be complicated but is well worth the journey. Most people start at Naples, the transportation hub and easily accessible by train or bus from Rome. Cruise ships also stop here. Trenitalia’s Alta Velocita train runs frequently between Rome and Naples, or you can fly into Naples Airport.

From Naples, there are multiple options for getting to Positano – by rental car, bus, ferry or private transportation.

The road to Positano is a steep, narrow, twisting highway best suited for Indy 500 drivers but also one of the most scenic coastal roads in the world. We recommend Amalfi Coast Transfers for transportation there. Pickup available at Naples airport, train station or port.

The Sita public buses run frequently along SS163, the Amalfi Drive from Naples or Sorrento. The ferry at the main ferry port (Molo Beverello) in Naples is another lovely option, but to get to Positano, you must take the ferry to Sorrento or Capri and then from either of those locations to Positano. There is no direct ferry from Naples to Positano. We opted to spend the night in Sorrento, then headed to Positano by hiring a car for the scenic drive as Steinbeck did.

Visit Positano.com for more information on the Amalfi Coast.

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