Amalfi Coast

Until 1832, there was no road along the Amalfi coast at all, and you got from one town to the next by sea. The towns were built around that fact: small harbours under the cliffs, narrow paths up to the houses, and lemon trees on every slope steep enough to terrace. UNESCO listed the whole stretch in 1997, about 40 kilometres of coast and twelve towns from Vietri sul Mare in the east to Positano in the west.

Positano is the photo everyone has seen, and a yacht is the only way to look at it from the front. Most charters anchor off Spiaggia Grande for the morning swim and tender into Marina Piccola at dusk for dinner. Further up the coast, Amalfi itself was an independent maritime republic in the 9th century, trading paper and spice with Cairo and Constantinople for two hundred years before Venice eventually took over the routes. Ravello, the inland-and-upward extension of the coast, sits 365 metres above the water on a cliff the medieval raiders couldn't reach, which is why the wealthy patrician families built villas there in the Middle Ages and why composers like Wagner kept coming back to write in them in the 19th century; the two best-known, Cimbrone and Rufolo, are still open to the public. Down the eastern end of the coast, Cetara has kept its small fishing fleet, which still goes out at four in the morning for the anchovies that the village brines into colatura, an amber-coloured fish sauce close to what the Romans used to make. The local lemon variety, the Sfusato Amalfitano, has carried EU geographical protection since 2000.

Anchorages on this coast are managed because of Posidonia, the protected seagrass that grows in the shallow water of most of the bays. That means a captain books the mooring buoys ahead, so the yacht can spend the night in the bay you actually came for rather than one further out. Most Amalfi charters pick up in Naples or Capri, and a week is enough for the coast but only just.