Vietri - Amalfi Coasting

Vietri
The center of ceramics
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by amalficoasting.org
At the Southern end of the
Amalfi Coast and with its small
churches with majolica-covered
domes and the tile-covered
houses, Vietri sul Mare seems
suspended between heaven and
earth. Founded by Etruscan, the
town was later dominated by the
Samnites, the Lucanians and finally by the Romans.
The Chiesa di San Giovanni
battista (#1 on the map), or St.
John the Baptist, with its majestic dome and high bell tower, is
located at the highest point of
the old center of town and date
back to the 17th century. Designed in late Renaissance style,
it is famous for the cusp of the
bell tower covered with painted
pottery that also characterize the
altars inside the church.
Other interesting places for
tourists in Vietri sul Mare are the
churches scattered around the
town and hamlets, like the
Chiesa di Santa Margherita di
Antiochia (#2), in Albori, and
the Chiesa della Madonna delle
Grazie (#3) in Benincasa.
Also of interest, at the end of
town in the direction of Salerno,
is the Torre Crestarella (#4), an
ancient watchtowers built as
part of a surveillance system that
stretched across the Amalfi
Coast..
Also of interest is the Palazzo
della Guardia (#5), near the
Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista,
a splendid example of Baroque
art with majolica floors.
Ceramics has a very old history in Vietri. In 899 there was a
trade in vases and tableware
from Amalfi and Salerno to
Taranto and documents from
the 15th century testify exports
to other regions.
Religious objects such as holy
water fonts for houses and the
votive tiles in the lanes and small
streets from Marina di Vietri to
Molina, Dragonea, Albori and
Raito are from the 17th century.
Vietri is known for its ceramics
breast, the sun and the moon
and the characteristic donkey.
But their production also had elements from their own culture.
The classic themes in Delker
and Kowaliska such as the panels showing Hector and Andromache, the mermaids' coast of
Odysseus or the sweet face of
the Madonna with Northern
European colors and the multicolored nativity scenes of Hannasch. This is the so-called
"German Period" which ended in
1947, not before it had changed
the style completely and created
Vietri
Vietri
At the beginning of the 19th
century the town started producing kitchenware decorated
with simple and floral motifs.
Floor and wall tiles were also
made at this time.
The most fertile period from a
creative point of view started in
the 1920s when many foreign
visitors, mostly German, came
to work in the factories in Vietri.
They expressed their art with
the natural and human elements
of the area: fishermen and
women by the pump, boats and
the sea, babies at their mother's
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1 Chiesa di San Giovanni Battista
2 Chiesa di Santa Margherita di Antiochia
3 Chiesa della Madonna delle Grazie
4 Torre Crestarella
5 Palazzo della Guardia
6 Museo della Ceramica di Vietri
Torre Crestarella
Vietri
Vietri
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new shapes and decorations.
Vietri and the other coastal
towns have become open-air
museums with many ceramic
shops to prove that the craft is
still alive.
The Museo della Ceramica
di Vietri (#6), or Vietri Ceramic
Museum is housed in the Torretta Belvedere, near Villa
Guariglia, in the small town of
Raito, high above Vietri.
The museum shows the history of the art and business of
ceramics. It is divided into
three sections: a religious one,
another reserved to the everyday
objects and a German Period
section.
The ceramic shops of Vietri
are a show within the show. The
narrow streets that rise on the
big terrace where the village
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Torretta Belvedere
stands, are lined with small
shops and workshops with tiles,
plates, holders, ashtrays, vases,
figurines, tea and coffee services,
sacred objects and the famous
donkeys, an ‘invention’ of the
German potters.