Why Amalfi needs a local guide
Amalfi was one of the four great maritime republics of Italy — alongside Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. Now it is a small town on a vertical coastline where the bus barely fits on the road. The cathedral's Arab-Norman cloister is one of the most beautiful things in southern Italy. Ravello is up the hill. Positano is down the coast. The lemon groves are everywhere.
Amalfi was a maritime republic that once rivalled Venice, and now it is a small town on a cliff where the SITA bus takes the mirrors off parked cars on every bend. The Duomo stairs fill with day-trippers by ten in the morning, but the Museo della Carta behind town still makes paper by hand using thirteenth-century stone hammers, and almost nobody visits. To become a tour guide in Amalfi means knowing which paths bypass the coastal road entirely — the Sentiero dei Limoni to Minori, the stairs up to Ravello before the tour buses arrive at eleven, the anchovies salt-cured in wooden barrels in Cetara one village over. The lemon groves produce the sfusato amalfitano that ends up in every delizia al limone and limoncello bottle on the coast. Ravello's Villa Rufolo gardens and the summer concerts there are worth the climb alone. Private boat tours along the coast from Amalfi to Positano command five hundred euros for a half-day, and car-and-guide excursions from Naples run even higher. If you want to become a tour guide in Amalfi, apply for the LYA guide position — this coast needs people who know the footpaths, not just the road, and who can get a group to Atrani before the rest of the world wakes up.