Southern Italy by the sea, past the Amalfi Coast
The Amalfi Coast is exactly as beautiful as the photographs, and exactly as crowded as you fear. In summer the single cliff road that links Positano, Amalfi and Ravello becomes one long traffic jam with a view, the towns are wall to wall, and the prices have detached from reality. It is worth seeing once. It is also not the only stretch of stunning coast in the Italian south, only the most famous, and the same sea continues for hundreds of kilometres with a fraction of the crowd.
This is a piece about going past the Amalfi Coast, south and east, to the parts of coastal southern Italy that still belong mostly to the Italians who holiday there.
The Cilento, just over the hill
Immediately south of the Amalfi peninsula, past the Greek temples of Paestum, begins the Cilento, a large national park of coast and mountain that almost no foreign visitor reaches. The water is the same Tyrrhenian blue, the coast is just as dramatic, and the towns, places like Castellabate, Acciaroli, Palinuro, are working Italian seaside towns rather than international destinations. You can swim off rocks and quiet coves, eat in a trattoria where the menu is in Italian only and the fish came in that morning, and pay a third of Amalfi prices.
The Cilento is also one of the original homes of the Mediterranean diet, studied here in the villages where people live remarkably long lives, and the food is plain and superb: mozzarella di bufala from the plains around Paestum, olive oil, fish, vegetables, very little fuss. This is the answer for anyone who wants the Amalfi feeling without the Amalfi circus, and it is barely an hour further south.
Maratea, the secret the Italians keep
Further down, where the region of Basilicata touches the sea for only a short stretch, sits Maratea, a town that does the Amalfi thing, dramatic cliffs, a pretty old centre, a coast of coves, with almost none of the recognition. There is a single famous sight, a huge white statue of Christ on the mountain above the town, and below it a coastline of small beaches reached by switchback roads. Italians know Maratea. Most foreigners have never heard the name. That gap is the whole appeal.
Around the boot to Puglia
Cross to the other coast and you reach Puglia, the heel of Italy, which has had its own rise in recent years but is large enough and varied enough to absorb it. The Adriatic side around Polignano a Mare and Monopoli gives you towns built on white limestone cliffs straight above turquoise water, with swimming coves tucked beneath them. Inland is the Valle d'Itria with its conical-roofed trulli houses around Alberobello and the white hill town of Ostuni. The Ionian side and the deep tip of the Salento have long flat beaches and water that goes an almost tropical blue.
Puglia is busier than the Cilento now, especially in August, but it is so much bigger than the Amalfi Coast that the pressure spreads out. Avoid the few honeypot towns at peak hour, base yourself in a masseria, the fortified old farmhouses turned into country hotels, and you have the south at its most relaxed.
How to think about the choice
If you have never been and you want the icon, see the Amalfi Coast, but do it in the shoulder season, May or late September, and stay in a less famous town like Atrani or up in Ravello rather than Positano. If you have seen it, or you care more about the experience than the name, go south. The Cilento for quiet and food, Maratea for drama without the crowd, Puglia for variety and that white-stone-and-turquoise combination that has made it the new favourite.
The deeper south rewards a slower style of travel. These are not places to tick off in a day. Rent a base near the water for a week, fall into the rhythm of a long lunch and an afternoon swim and a late dinner, and let one town be enough. The whole point of leaving the famous coast behind is to stop performing the trip and start having it.
A note
What makes these places good is precisely that they are not yet overrun, which means writing about them carries a small guilt. The honest version: southern Italy is poorer than the north and tourism brings real money to towns that need it, so going is not the problem. Going badly is. Travel in the shoulder season, spread out beyond the few famous spots, learn ten words of Italian, eat where the locals eat, and leave your money in family businesses rather than chains. Do that and the deep south gives you the Mediterranean as it was before the most beautiful stretch of it became a parking lot with a view.