Italy
Furore
Houses cling to a fjord so narrow the sea vanishes below this centreless village.
The village has no centre. Houses hold opposite walls of a narrow gorge that splits the Amalfi cliffs, joined by a high bridge framing a sliver of turquoise far below. Furore exists in the vertical: stairways for streets, terraced vines for gardens.
Furore holds a place on Italy's roll of finest villages, and its fiordo, where the Schiato stream meets the sea, is the Amalfi Coast's only fjord-like inlet. The settlement was always so scattered across the cliff that it was nicknamed the town that does not exist; since the 1980s, murals by visiting artists have turned the dispersed houses into an open-air gallery, and an ecomuseum now links the paths between them. For years an international championship sent high divers off the bridge into the inlet far below. The terraces above, so steep that harvest work needs ropes, yield Costa d'Amalfi DOC wine.
Solo
This is the Amalfi Coast stripped of performance; walk mural to mural between scattered houses and feel the coast as it was before the buses.
Couple
The inlet below, the cliff-edge tables above and all that altitude turn every meal into a private balcony.
- Furore's fiordo is the Amalfi Coast's only fjord-like inlet, crossed by a single high bridge.
- There is no piazza and no centre; the village scatters down the cliff, stitched by stairways.
- Since the 1980s, murals have accumulated across the houses into an unmanaged open-air gallery.
- For years an international championship sent divers off the bridge into the inlet below.
Totani e patate, squid braised with terrace-grown potatoes, is the fisherman's dish of this coast.
Costa d'Amalfi DOC wine comes off terraces so steep the pickers work with ropes.
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