Fiordo di Furore — fjord
Ugeorge · CC BY-SA 3.0

Fiordo di Furore

  • 2 min read
  • 40.614° N 14.554° E

Interesting facts

  • Furore is nicknamed 'il paese che non c'è', the village that isn't there, because it cannot be seen from the coast below.
  • The old mill and paper mill in the gorge were turned into the Ecomuseum of the Fjord, with a small botanical garden and herbarium.
  • Beside the paper mill survives the stenditoio, the airy loft where freshly made sheets of paper were hung to dry.
  • A calcara, a traditional lime kiln once used to produce lime for local building, also survives in the fjord.
  • The cliff-diving competition held from the bridge each summer is known as the Marmeeting.
  • The Schiato torrent that carved the gorge is almost always dry, flowing only for short spells.
  • The comune of Furore, spread over its steep slopes, has fewer than a thousand inhabitants.

Why it is worth it

The Fiordo di Furore is a narrow cleft in the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast, so deep and so tight that the sea seems to run straight into the mountain. At its mouth a tiny pebble beach lies between walls of rock, and high above it a single arch carries the Amalfi Drive, state road SS163, across the gap at a height of about 30 metres. Despite the name it is not a true fjord, which would be carved by ice, but a ria: a valley cut over millennia by the Schiato torrent tumbling down from the Lattari Mountains around Agerola, then drowned by the sea.

Hidden in the gorge is a hamlet of the comune of Furore, once a busy little working place. The Schiato valley powered a mill and a paper factory, and Furore was long known for papermaking, silk, pasta making and rope making alongside fishing and olive oil; the old mill buildings still stand by the stream. The fishermen's houses tucked into the rock attracted Roberto Rossellini and Anna Magnani, who lived here and shot scenes of the film "L'amore" (1948) in Furore. The church of Santa Caterina alla Ruota also stands within the fjord. Each year the bridge becomes a stage of a world cliff-diving championship, with divers dropping from the arch into the narrow inlet below.

Furore itself climbs the slopes from sea level to around 550 metres, and its houses are decorated with an open-air gallery of murals. Its name is traditionally explained by the roar of storms in the gorge. In the Middle Ages it was a hamlet beyond the walls of Amalfi before becoming a self-governing community, and its churches keep Roman marble funerary urns and a triptych of 1492 by Angelo Antonello da Capua in Sant'Elia.

Getting there

The fjord sits on the Amalfi Drive (SS163) between Conca dei Marini and Praiano, about 5 km west of Amalfi in a straight line. Gragnano, the nearest town by straight line, lies on the other side of the Lattari Mountains. The nearest airport is Salerno Costa d'Amalfi (QSR), about 30 km away; Naples International (NAP), roughly 37 km away, is the main airport for the coast.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Salerno 6The Most Beautiful Places in Campania 29The Most Beautiful Places in Italy 279The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in Campania 5The Most Beautiful Fjords 16The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in Italy 25The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders 580

40.61420, 14.55437per Wikidata