An Introduction to Campania

After three and a half weeks in northern Italy, it was time to fly south to Naples, on the Mediterranean coast. For the next 9 days, as I explored the Campania region on a Grand Circle adventure, I’d be based in Sorrento. Actually, I had two or three days on my own before the tour began. I chose this particular trip for two reasons: (1) because I’d heard so much about the beauties of the Amalfi coast; and (2) because I wanted to see the ruins of Pompeii, located not far from Naples. 

 

Campania stretches down southern Italy’s Mediterranean coast. According to research I did before leaving home, it’s Italy’s most densely populated region, with the population concentrated around Naples, the regional capital. Here’s a quick review of the region’s history.

 

Etruscans invaded the region and established an inland settlement in the 9^th century BCE. They were followed by Greek colonists who founded several colonies along the coast, including Neapolis (“new city”), today’s Naples, in the 8^th century BCE. About 300 years later, much of Campania, including the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, was conquered by an Italic tribe called the Samnites. 

 

After the Romans defeated the Samnites in the mid-4^th century BCE, Campagna became a popular holiday destination for the Roman elite. This included the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which were destroyed by eruptions of nearby Mount Vesuvius in 79CE. 

 

After the western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, control of Campagna passed back and forth among Byzantines, Goths, and Lombards for several centuries. It became part of the Kingdom of Naples when the Normans unified southern Italy in the 12^th century. From the 13^th to the 19^th century, the Kingdom of Naples was ruled by a succession of French and Spanish dynasties. Under the leadership of Garibaldi, the movement known as the Risorgimento brought an end to foreign rule and Campania became part of the unified Kingdom of Italy in 1861. 

 

Due to its fertile volcanic soil, Campania has long been a productive agricultural area. Major crops are lemons, nuts, artichokes, grapes, figs and other fruit, vegetables, and olives. Agricultural products such as buffalo mozzarella, pasta, and olive oil comprise a large percentage of the region’s exports. 

 

Along with agriculture, tourism contributes greatly to Campania’s economy. Tourism is especially important in Naples and along the Amalfi coast. The manufacturing sector of the region’s economy includes aerospace, pharmaceuticals, railway transport, automotive parts. However, Campania’s unemployment rate, which has recently hovered around 15%, remains higher throughout the region than in the north of Italy. An additional economic problem in some parts of Campania continues to be organized crime. 

 

Immediately after landing in Naples, I was whisked away by a pre-arranged driver to Sorrento, a little over 30 miles from the Naples airport.  Until I looked carefully at a map, I wasn’t exactly sure where Sorrento, my new temporary home away from home, was located. Looking at a map, I discovered that it’s not on the Amalfi coast. It’s on the north coast of a peninsula that juts out in the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Naples. The Amalfi coast is the south coast of the peninsula. While Sorrento faces the Gulf of Naples, the towns on the Amalfi coast face the Gulf of Salerno.

As we drove along the busy highway, my driver, who was in his early 20s, kept up a constant conversation in English. He pointed out Mount Vesuvius and said that he and his girlfriend were hoping to visit the United States. And where will you go? I asked. To Orlando, to Disney World, he replied. I guess if you grow up with Mount Vesuvius in your backyard and you’ve always been surrounded by thousands of years of history, Disney World might seen exotic. 

 

When we approached Sorrento, he pulled over to the side of the road so I could take a few photos looking down at the town. 

In contrast to many of the towns on the coast, Sorrento isn’t built on a steep hillside. Its town center is located on a wide plateau about 50 meters (165 feet) above sea level. 

Staying at the same hotel for nine nights meant I could completely settle in. Once I unpacked, I headed down towards the bustling main square, Piazza Tasso. The broad piazza is surrounded by cafes, shops, and historic buildings. A statue of the 16^th century Sorrento-born poet Torquato Tasso stands on one side of the square. 

I have to admit that my first impression of Sorrento wasn’t very positive. I don’t know quite what I expected – probably palm trees, Mediterranean beaches, and certainly no people were in the picture. But on this sunny Saturday afternoon, all I could see in Sorrento were tourists. They were clogging the sidewalks, taking up all the outdoor café tables, and stubbornly standing in the way when I wanted to take a photo. I gritted my teeth as I walked up and down the pedestrian streets leading off the piazza, passing one shop after another selling lemon-themed tee-shirts, lemon-themed tea towels, lemon-themed umbrellas, lemon-themed socks, lemon-themed everything. 

The only way I’d survive nine days in Sorrento was to block out the tourists and focus on the sights, such as the Cathedral’s bell tower, which rises up serenely in the midst of all activity at ground level. The base of the tower dates back to Roman times although the façade is only about 100 years old.

 

I found a temporary respite from the commercial scene in Sorrento’s Cathedral of San Filippo and Giacomo (Saints Philip and James). The current Romanesque style building dates back to the 15^th century. 

Food was constantly on my mind and I checked out the menus of all the restaurants I passed in the pedestrian area. At 6pm, I sat down at a table in Restaurant Tasso. I was the sole diner since it was much too early for Italians or other Europeans to eat dinner. Sorrento seemed like the perfect place to satisfy my craving for pasta with seafood. The dish I ordered, called scialatielli ai frutti di mare, arrived in a big bowl overflowing with clams, mussels, and cherry tomatoes. The homemade pasta was thick and chewy and the sauce clung to it perfectly. I later found out that this type of pasta is a local specialty. It’s made of a dough containing milk, eggs, and Parmesan cheese. No wonder it was so delicious.  

Over the next couple of days, I continued to explore Sorrento on my own and found that despite its overflowing crowds in certain areas, it was quite a pleasant place. I also took a couple of independent side trips before the Grand Circle tour officially began. In my next post, I’ll tell you about my adventures (and misadventures) in Positano and Capri.  

A Final Day in Northern Italy

The last day of my Northern Italy adventure finally arrived. The agenda for the day called for a fairly long drive south from Bressanone/Brixen on the Autostrada into the province of Trentino, a late morning stop at an apple farm in Trentino's Valsugana valley, and then a shorter drive east into the Veneto region. Our final destination was the town of Perganziol, located not far from Venice’s Marco Polo airport. Total distance to be covered – 250 kilometers (155 miles). 

It was a beautiful day for a drive through the countryside, and we arrived around noon, right on schedule, at the Masa Conca Verde apple orchard in the Valsugana. This valley runs east-west, with the Dolomites to the north and the Venetian pre-Alps to the south. The location was on the front lines during World War 1. Most of the population fled as the valley became a battlefield between Austrian and Italian troops who were stationed in the mountains.

 

The owner of the farm, Elvis, welcomed us and gave us a tour of the property, which overlooks the valley. The province of Trentino, and the Valsugana in particular, is famous for apples and this particular piece of land has been used as an orchard since Renaissance times. The soil is very rich and full of nutrients.

 

Elvis told us he grew up on the farm, which his father acquired in the 1970s. He currently grows several different kinds of apples, including golden Delicious, Fuji, Gala, and Swing. The apple trees are not free-standing. They are trained to grow on wires, which makes it easier to reach the fruit at harvest time. Elvis does most of the annual pruning and fertilizing himself, and he has installed a drip irrigation system. 

At this time of year, there were no mature apples on the trees.

 

When the fruit is ripe, he hires five workers (usually from African countries) to do the picking and he then sells his apples through a cooperative. However, he reserves some of the apples for making juice. 

 

In addition to nine acres of apple trees, some land is devoted to cherry trees and a half-acre terraced vineyard whose grapes he sells to wine producers.

He also grows different varieties of corn. Maize arrived in northern Italy in the early 1500s, following the voyages of European explorers to the Americas. It quickly gained favor, eventually replacing millet in the preparation of polenta, the traditional porridge. 

 

We went inside to meet his family and to enjoy a lunch made with produce from the farm. 

The main course was polenta, a dish so popular in this part of Italy that people from the South call Northerners “polentoni,” (big polenta eaters). His mother had cooked the polenta in a big copper pot using corn meal from a local variety of Indian corn grown on the farm.

After Elvis brought the pot to the table and flipped out the polenta (amazingly, it didn’t stick to the pot!), his mother sliced through the mound with a wire. 

Everyone got a portion, which served as a base for a flavorful tomato and cheese ragù. Along with the polenta, we ate a cabbage salad seasoned with caraway seeds and drank homemade apple juice. The dessert was a panna cotta with strawberry coulis. It made for a simple but very satisfying meal. 

We resumed our journey towards the Veneto after lunch, arriving at our hotel in Preganziol in the middle of the afternoon. The hotel was quite comfortable but there wasn’t anything interesting within walking distance. Like everyone in my group, I was already packed, my boarding pass was on my phone, and I was in that mental state of in between places, suspended between part one and part two of my Italian adventure. 

 

Dinner at the hotel was a reminder of how wonderful the food is in Italy. After an al fresco aperitivo, we went inside for an excellent multi-course dinner of salad, trofie pasta with pesto, gnocchi with ragú, perfectly cooked salmon, grilled eggplant and red peppers, tiramisu (which originated in the Veneto). 

The evening was bittersweet. I had shared so many wonderful experiences with the members of my group over the past three weeks. Now we were all going our separate ways. Most were heading home while I was continuing on to another adventure. In the morning, I’d be flying from Venice to Naples, for the start of the Grand Circle Impressions of Italy trip. While I loved northern Italy, I was looking forward to seeing another region of Italy that I’d never explored before. 

 

Day of the Dolomites

My final day in Dolomite country had arrived and I was still waiting for my first look at the Dolomites. I woke up in thinking, hoping, praying – please, please, let me see at least one dolomite today. 

 

There were a few clouds in the sky when we departed Bressanone/Brixen right after breakfast but I refused to allow them to dash my belief that the Dolomites would appear. We drove south on the highway, then east on a steep and winding mountain road, up and up and up, towards the Val Gardena, right into the heart of Dolomite country.

And then suddenly, we saw them, through the bus window – Dolomites! Right in front of our eyes! 

In addition to being in Dolomite country, we were also in the land of Ladin. I knew practically nothing about this third official language of the South Tyrol prior to my trip. It dates back nearly 2000 years. The base of the language is Latin, i.e. the vulgar Latin spoken by the soldiers of the Roman army, which fused with the Celtic language of the inhabitants of the alpine valleys. In the border areas, there were later borrowings from German and Slavic languages. Today, it is spoken by 4.5 percent of the people in the South Tyrol, primarily in isolated villages in five remote alpine valleys. There is even a weekly newspaper published in the Ladin language. 

 

Our first stop of the day was in Selva di Val Gardena (Wolkenstein in German), the highest and easternmost village in the Val Gardena valley. It’s nestled beneath the Selle group of Dolomites at an elevation of 1563 meters (5128 feet, nearly a mile).  

With its spectacular mountain scenery, Selva has become a year-round holiday destination. The area offers 25 miles of trails for downhill skiing. In warmer months, plentiful opportunities for hiking and mountain biking attract tourists. We asked about mountain climbing but our tour leader told us that the Dolomites are difficult to climb because they’re made of a relatively soft stone that crumbles easily. 

The village residents are clearly proud of their Ladin cultural heritage. The Ladin flag was flying in the meadow where we parked the bus. It has equal bands of sky blue, white, green – blue for the skies, white for the snow-capped peaks of the Dolomites, green for the meadows and pastures. 

 

We stopped for coffee and restrooms in a cozy wood paneled café/bar that was crowded with locals (all men). Woodworking is one of traditional handicrafts practiced by the Ladin people for centuries. In one of the village shops, I was very impressed with the intricacy of some of the carved pieces. Although I couldn’t buy anything large, I couldn’t resist purchasing a couple of small souvenirs. 

Once we left Selva, we turned north towards the Val Badia, another one of the five valleys where Ladin villages are located. The valley is 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) long and the villages were so isolated from each other that three distinct dialects developed over the centuries. During World War 1, the border between Austria-Hungary and Italy cut through this area, with Austria-Hungary controlling the high ground. Italian soldiers were stationed in the mountains for three years in defensive positions. Many died from the bitter cold and lack of supplies. 

 

Traveling east to the Badia valley, we made a photo stop along the mountain road.

I was even able to take some fairly decent photos from the windows of the bus although it was impossible to capture the wide-open vistas or the very steep hillsides where calmly grazing sheep or cows seemed to defy gravity. 

We stopped again for photos in Corvara, in the Badia valley. 

We reached our destination in the Alta Badia region around 11am and met up with our Ladin guide, Richard, who led us on a hike in the area of La Ila, one of the Ladin villages. 

The village is located at an elevation of 4700 feet and the scenery was breathtaking. Some of the World Cup alpine ski races take place on nearby slopes. According to Richard, tourism has been developing rapidly here since the 1980s.  

The area is known for its golden Haflinger horses, a breed that originated in the mountains of the Tyrol. They’re often called Cappuccino horses because of their golden color. 

Our hike led us past a lovely chalet. 

This day in Dolomite country was certainly one of the highlights of the trip. On the drive back to Bressanone/Brixen, I realized that my time in northern Italy was drawing to a close. We had one more evening in Bressanone. The following day, we’d make a brief stop in the Valsunga in the Trentino province the OAT Northern Italy trip came to an end. I could hardly believe that I’d already been away from home for three weeks. 

 

I took advantage of the remaining afternoon hours in Bressanone/Brixen to take a closer look at its Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the adjoining cloister. The original structure dates back to the late 10^thcentury.  However, it was rebuilt in the 12^th century in the Romanesque style and again in the mid-18^th century in the Baroque style.

Even more impressive (in my opinion) was the cloister, which is covered in a wealth of Romanesque and Gothic frescoes from the 14^th and 15^th centuries. I was amazed at the vibrancy of the colors in the depictions of Biblical scenes and medieval life. 

 

I spent some time at an outdoor table munching on a slab of pizza and watching people pass by.

 

Early the following morning, I took a final stroll through the old town, savoring the scenes of life in this very special part of Italy.