Positano

When John Steinbeck visited Positano in 1953, he wrote that it was difficult to consider tourism an industry because ‘there are not enough [tourists]’.

Alas, there are now more than enough of them, and the town’s vertical landscape of pastel-colored houses, curtains of bright pink bougainvillea and sapphire-blue sea make it easy to see why.

The most photographed fishing village in the world, this fabulous locale is home to around 4,000 Positanesi, who are joined daily by hordes from Capri, Sorrento and Amalfi.

The town clings to the Lattari Mountains with arcaded cubic buildings, arranged in steps up the mountainside, in shades of pink, peach, purple and ivory.

A name now known around the world, its origins may be a corruption of the Greek “Poseidon”, or derived from a man named Posides, who owned villas here in the time of Claudius; or even from Roman freedmen, called Posdii.

The most popular theory is that the name “Positano” derives from Pestano (or Pesitano), a 9th-century town from a Benedictine abbey near Montepertuso, built by refugees from Paestum to the south, whose homes had been sacked by the Saracens.

Pisa sacked the area in 1268, but after an elaborate defensive system of watchtowers was put in place, Positano prospered again, briefly rivaling Amalfi.

As a fiefdom of Neapolitan families until the late 17th century, Positano produced silk and, later, linen goods, but decline began again in the late 18th century.

With the advent of the steamship in the mid-19th century, about three-quarters of the town’s 8,000 citizens emigrated to America, mostly New York, and eventually regressed to a backwater fishing village.

That is, until artists and intellectuals, and then travelers, rediscovered its prodigious charms in the 20th century. Picasso, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Olivier, Steinbeck, Klee, even Lenin, were just a few of this town’s talented fans.

Lemons, grapes, olives, fish, resort gear and, of course, tourism continue to thrive, but despite its refined and sophisticated popularity, Positano’s main export remains its most valuable asset: beauty.