Heritage Walking
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Positano: Stair Lanes to the Sea

From the upper church of Chiesa Nuova down the stair lanes to the maiolica dome, the big beach and the cliff path to Fornillo. Ten stops, about 70 minutes, almost all of it downhill.

This is a self-guided walk, not a guided tour with a leader: no booking, no fixed start time. See the walking route and the walking map before you go, then follow the numbers — the audio guide plays by itself as you reach each stop. Free, with no app to install and no sign-up.

At ~70 min it fits a half day of independent travel, and joining it to another walk in Positano makes a full-day itinerary.

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Positano, Italy · ~70 min · 2.0 km · 10 stops

Stops on this walk

1. Chiesa Nuova, Santa Maria delle Grazie

An oval church under a dome, standing where the road into the upper town bends.

Look at the small church with the dome at the bend of the road. This is the Chiesa Nuova, the new church, though the name is older than it sounds. Its proper title is Santa Maria delle Grazie, Our Lady of Graces. Buses from the coast road stop beside it, so this bend is a common arrival point for visitors. Its origins are not recorded. What is known is that it was rebuilt over an earlier chapel from the eleventh century. The shape you see came later, an elliptical plan covered by a dome. Inside, the floor is laid with painted maiolica tiles in plant patterns, the work of restorations in the eighteenth century. Positano is nicknamed the vertical town, and this is the upper part of it. Houses step down the slope below you. Typical of the place are the many stairways that run from the top of the village all the way to the beach. The lanes that drop away from here were made for feet, not for wheels. Standing at the top of them, you can read the whole town at once, roofs below roofs down to the water.

The stairways are steep and uneven. Wear shoes with grip and take the steps slowly. Going down is harder on the knees than it looks, so pause at the landings.

2. Via Pasitea

The one road that snakes through the whole town, with stairways leaving it at every bend.

You are on Via Pasitea, the road that winds through Positano in long hairpin bends. Cars, scooters and local buses share it with people on foot. Look over the parapet and the roofs drop away in steps toward the water. The name belongs to the whole length of the road, from the upper bends down to the square where cars stop. A town built on a cliff needs one road for wheels and many paths for feet. Via Pasitea is the road. Almost everything else here is stairs. Typical of Positano are the staircases that run from the top of the village down to the beach. They cut across the bends of this road again and again. Where a stairway leaves the road, it is often the quicker way down. Stop for a moment where the steps branch off. They are shaded by house walls and climbing plants, and they pass front doors that no car has ever reached. Along the road itself, shopfronts sell clothing, sandals and ceramics, the trade that fills the lower town today. Hotels and restaurants put their terraces at this height because it gives the widest view of the bay.

There is no proper pavement on much of Via Pasitea. Walk on the inside of the bends and listen for scooters coming from behind.

3. Piazza dei Mulini

The square of the mills, where wheels stop and the walking town begins.

Look around the small square. On one side stands a plain church, the Chiesa del Rosario. The name of the square, Piazza dei Mulini, means the square of the mills. It is small enough to cross in a few steps, yet it is the hinge of the town. The church began as a Dominican convent founded in 1614. The convent was suppressed in 1652, so it lasted less than forty years. The church was later turned into a courthouse. In time it became the seat of the confraternity of the Holy Rosary, which is where its present name comes from. Earthquake damage closed it for years, and it was reopened for worship in 2006. Inside, a Roman sarcophagus of uncertain origin is kept, carved with a dancing procession. In the niche of the altar stands a statue of the Madonna of the Rosary from the nineteenth century. Outside, this square is where the town changes gear. Buses stop here and cars turn back, and the lane that leaves the square belongs to people on foot. Everything below this point is reached by stairs.

Buses stop at this square, so it is crowded around midday. Early morning is the quiet time to see it.

4. Via dei Mulini

A stepped lane of shops under a roof of climbing flowers.

Look up. The lane runs under trellises hung with climbing flowers, and the shopfronts below are dressed with linen clothes, leather sandals and painted ceramics. This is Via dei Mulini, the lane of the mills, and it is the busiest few hundred steps in Positano. It was not always a shopping street. Positano was a relatively poor fishing village through the first half of the twentieth century. A century earlier the town had fallen on hard times, and more than half of its people emigrated, mostly to America. Tourists began arriving in large numbers only in the 1950s. In May 1953 the American writer John Steinbeck published an essay on the town in Harper's Bazaar. He wrote that it is a dream place that isn't quite real when you are there, and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone. This lane is where that change shows most clearly. Where fishermen once walked down to the shore, visitors now drift between boutiques. Look at the lane itself rather than the windows. It is still a stair street, stepped and narrow, and still the main way down to the church and the beach.

The lane is narrow and busy. If you stop to look at a window, keep to one side so people can pass with their beach bags.

5. Santa Maria Assunta and the Roman Villa

The maiolica dome of Positano, and a Roman villa buried beneath it in 79 AD.

Look up at the dome. It is covered in maiolica tiles of green, blue and yellow, and it is the one roof everyone knows from pictures of the town. This is the church of Santa Maria Assunta, the parish church of Positano. The story begins with a Benedictine abbey, recorded here from 994 and consecrated in 1159. By tradition the abbey was founded after an icon of the Virgin arrived by sea. Legend says a ship from the East was stuck in a dead calm off this coast. The crew heard a voice cry Posa, posa, which means set it down. They took it as an order about the icon on board, and they gave the icon to the people here. The present building comes from a complete rebuilding between 1777 and 1783. The bell tower is older, from 1707, and on its lower level sits a medieval relief of a sea monster with seven fish and a fox. Beneath your feet lies a Roman villa, buried when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. It was first described in 1758 by Karl Weber, the engineer in charge of the digs at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Excavations between 2004 and 2016 uncovered a dining room painted in the Fourth Pompeian style, with one scene showing the centaur Chiron teaching Achilles the lyre. The site opened in July 2018 as the MAR, the Roman Archaeological Museum, entered from the piazza beside the church.

The museum entrance and ticket office are at Piazza Flavio Gioia 7, beside the church. Opening hours change with the season, so check the museum website before you plan your time underground.

6. Spiaggia Grande

The big beach at the foot of the town, where Positano meets the sea.

Turn toward the town and look up the slope. From the beach the whole slope of Positano stands in one view. Houses stack in pale colours up to the ridge, with the maiolica dome in the middle. This is Spiaggia Grande, the big beach, also called Marina Grande. It is the most recognised beach in the town, and it sits at the base of the cliffs. For most of Positano's history it was a working shore. The town was a port of the Republic of Amalfi in the Middle Ages and prospered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the eighteenth century many townspeople became shipowners and merchants, trading in fine textiles across Europe and the Americas. That trade broke down in the Napoleonic wars, and the long decline that followed ended only with tourism. Now look out to sea. On a clear day three small islands show to the south west. They are Li Galli, identified since antiquity with the Sirens of the Odyssey, who in the myth were turned to stone after losing a singing contest. In the twentieth century the islands belonged to two dancers in turn, Léonide Massine and later Rudolf Nureyev. Boats still pull up on the sand here, though today they mostly carry visitors.

Part of the beach is run as paid lidos in summer, with a free section kept beside them. Ferries leave from the jetty on the western side of the beach, so the promenade is busiest when a boat is due.

7. Via Positanesi d'America

A footpath cut into the cliff just above the water, linking the two beaches.

Look along the path cut into the rock just above the water. This is Via Positanesi d'America, which means the Positano people of America. It links the two beaches of the town along the base of the cliff. The name speaks of emigrants. By the middle of the nineteenth century Positano had fallen on hard times, and more than half of its population left, mostly for America. Through the first half of the twentieth century the town remained a relatively poor fishing village. Only in the 1950s did visitors start arriving in numbers, and the fortunes of the town turned. Walk it slowly. On the seaward side the water is close enough to hear, and on the other side the cliff rises straight above the path. A round stone tower stands on a spur of rock along the path. This is one of the few stretches of Positano that is nearly level, which makes it the easiest walk in a town made of stairs. It is also the best place to see how the houses hang on the cliff. For once you are looking at them from the side instead of from below.

The first stretch is stepped, after that the path is mostly flat. The stone is slippery when wet, and there is little shade at midday.

8. Torre Trasita

A round watchtower between the two beaches, built against raiders from the sea.

Look at the round tower on the rock beside the path. This is Torre Trasita, and it stands between the two beaches of the town, Spiaggia Grande to the east and Fornillo to the west. The path passes right under its walls. It is a circular tower of the viceregal period, when southern Italy was ruled by Spanish viceroys, and it served as a barrier tower guarding the shore. Towers like this were built to counter frequent raids by Saracen and corsair ships. In 1532 the viceroy Pedro de Toledo ordered coastal towns to build watchtowers at their own expense. From 1563 the crown took over the programme and decided where each tower would go. From every tower the sea could be watched, and usually the two neighbouring towers were in sight. A warning could pass along the coast by fire and smoke. Three such towers stand along Positano's shore. Trasita is the one in the middle. To the west, on the far side of Fornillo, is the five sided Torre di Fornillo. To the east, beyond the main beach, is Torre Sponda, the oldest of the three, dated to the thirteenth century. Look at the thickness of the walls and the few small openings. These were not homes, they were eyes.

The path narrows at the tower. Let people coming the other way pass before you go round, and keep children on the landward side.

9. Fornillo Beach

The quieter second beach of Positano, in a cove of its own.

Look along the curve of dark pebbles and sand. This is Fornillo, the second largest beach in Positano, tucked into its own cove west of the main town. Fornillo feels like a different place from Spiaggia Grande, although the two are a few minutes apart on foot. The cove is closed on both sides by rock, so the centre of town is hidden behind the spur with the round tower. What you see is cliff, a scatter of houses on the slope, and the sea. Beach clubs and a few restaurants sit at the back of the beach in season, and the rest of the year it is close to empty. This coast has been lived on for a very long time. The first traces of people in Positano go back to the Upper Palaeolithic, when hunters and gatherers used the cave called Grotta La Porta. Romans settled from around 100 BC and built luxurious villas on this shore. Since 1997 Positano has been part of the Amalfi Coast World Heritage site. Standing on Fornillo, with nothing in front of you but water and rock, that long span of time is easy to feel.

Fornillo has a free stretch as well as paid lidos. The pebbles are hard on bare feet, so bring sandals you can wear into the water.

10. Torre di Fornillo, Torre Clavel

A five sided tower that a Swiss writer rebuilt, closing the bay to the west.

Look at the tower on the point that closes the bay to the west. It has five sides, which is unusual for a watchtower on this coast. This is the Torre di Fornillo, better known as Torre Clavel. Like the other towers of Positano, it began as a coastal watchtower against raids from the sea. In 1909 it was bought by Gilbert Clavel, a Swiss archaeologist and writer born in 1883. The tower was then falling into ruin, and he had it rebuilt while keeping its pentagonal plan. Clavel moved in the circles of the Italian avant garde. From 1917 he was close to the futurist painter Fortunato Depero, who illustrated his book Un istituto per suicidi. Clavel died in Basel in 1927, and the tower has carried his name ever since. Now look across the cove. Torre Trasita is in sight on the far spur, and that is exactly what these towers were built for, each one watching the next along the coast. Between the two towers lies the whole of Fornillo, a beach, a path and a handful of houses. It is the quietest corner of Positano, and the tower at the end of it is the point where the town stops and the open coast begins.

The tower is a private building and is not open to visitors. From the western end of the beach, the stairway called Via Fornillo climbs back up toward Via Pasitea if you want to return to the upper town.