Things to Do in Positano

Positano rewards slow days: a church with a Roman villa beneath it, a path along the top of the cliffs, a boat to a beach with no road. Between the day tours from Positano you book, here is what fills the rest of your time, and how long each one takes.

Santa Maria Assunta and its tiled dome

The church at the foot of the town is the building every photograph of Positano is composed around, its dome covered in green and yellow majolica tiles. Inside hangs a 13th-century Byzantine icon of the Black Madonna. The town tells how sailors carrying it heard a voice say "Posa, posa", put it down, and landed it here. You can step in on your way to the beach; the story of the church and the town is on Positano's history.

MAR Positano: the Roman villa under the church

Beneath Santa Maria Assunta lies a Roman villa buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, the same eruption that buried Pompeii. Nobody knew it was there until 2000; it was excavated in two campaigns and opened to visitors on 18 July 2018, with painted walls in the fourth Pompeian style and a medieval crypt above them.

Walk the Path of the Gods

The Sentiero degli Dei runs high above the coast from Bomerano, in Agerola, to Nocelle, above Positano: about 7.8 km, dropping from roughly 635 m to 430 m, and around two to two and a half hours on the path itself. Walking it towards Positano keeps the view in front of you all the way.

1. Take the SITA bus to Bomerano; ask for the Agerola service at the ticket seller.
2. Walk from the village to the start of the path and follow it west towards Nocelle.
3. From Nocelle, take the local bus down through Montepertuso, or the long stairway to the town, counted at somewhere between 1,500 and 1,700 steps.
4. Carry water and wear proper shoes; the path is rocky and has little shade.

Nocelle and Montepertuso above the town

The two hamlets that belong to Positano sit on the mountain above it, Montepertuso first and Nocelle higher still, where the Path of the Gods comes down. Both are reached by the local Mobility Amalfi Coast bus from the town, which saves the stairway, and both look straight down the coast towards Li Galli. How to catch the bus is on getting around Positano.

See Li Galli from the water

The three islets off Positano, Gallo Lungo, La Rotonda and La Castelluccia, are private, and Rudolf Nureyev owned them until his death in 1993. You cannot land, but several boats stop to swim beside them or pass close by on the way to Capri, which is the only way you will see them up close.

Take the boat to Laurito for lunch

Laurito is a small cove east of the town with no road down to it. The Da Adolfo restaurant runs its own boat, the one with a red fish on its mast, from the pier on Spiaggia Grande, and a long lunch there is one of the town's oldest pleasures. The beach itself is on Positano's beaches.

Shop the lanes for sandals and linen

The lanes between the church and the road are lined with shops selling the town's own resort clothes and handmade sandals, a trade that grew from the "Moda Positano" of the late 1950s and the sandal makers of the 1960s. Ceramics from along the coast fill the rest. Shops open late in summer, when the lanes are cooler.

Five things by boat or road

The day trips people plan from Positano, how long each takes and how you get there.

If you only have one day for a boat, choose the coast towards Amalfi for swimming, set out on Positano boat tours, or the island on Capri tours from Positano. If the sea is rough, the Pompeii days run whatever the weather.