Beneath Positano's postcard pastel lies a Roman villa buried by Vesuvius in AD 79, a Byzantine Madonna that gave the town its name, and coastal towers raised against Saracen raiders. Three days of ruins, crypts, towers and mill paths.
A 1st-century AD maritime villa buried by the AD 79 Vesuvius eruption, rediscovered under the church crypt. The triclinium frescoes show sea creatures, masks and a winged cherub on red panels. Open Tue–Sun 09:00–20:00 summer; timed entry.
The crypt holds the stone 'scolatoi' where Positano's nobles were seated to decompose before burial. Outside, the 1707 bell tower reuses a 13th-century Benedictine bas-relief of a pistrice — a sea monster flanked by a fox and fish.
A 16th-century Aragonese watchtower on the rock dividing Grande from Fornillo beach, part of the Viceroy's warning chain against Barbary corsairs. Signal fires here relayed alarms to Praiano within minutes. Now a private residence, viewable from the Via Positanesi d'America path.
The cliff walkway named for the villagers who emigrated to America around 1900 links the two beaches past Torre Clavel, a 1930s tower home of Belgian aristocrat Gilbert Clavel, who tunnelled the rock and hosted Futurist artists.
Three islets Homer identified with the Sirens, later a Roman anchorage and a monastic penal colony. Rudolf Nureyev bought them in 1988 after Léonide Massine, who built a dance studio on Gallo Lungo. Boats leave Spiaggia Grande hourly.
Positano fashion began in 1959 when local tailors adapted linen for foreign visitors; the light 'Positano dress' was exported worldwide by the 1960s. The oldest workshops on Via Pasitea still cut and sew on-site rather than importing.
Two more Viceroyalty towers guard the western approach. Sponda dates from 1567 after the Turkish raid on Massa Lubrense; Fornillo, squatter and earlier, watched the fishing coves. Both were manned by paid 'torrieri' until 1806.
An 18th-century Baroque summer residence built for the Benedictine abbot and later used by Joachim Murat, Napoleon's marshal and King of Naples, during his 1808–15 reign. The vaulted courtyard and bougainvillea garden are open to the public.
The 'Path of the Gods' followed by shepherds and mule trains long before the coast road of 1840. Cut into limestone at 500m, it passes Grotta del Biscotto's cave dwellings and terraces worked continuously since the Middle Ages. 6.5km, mostly downhill.
Until 1996 Nocelle had no road at all — everything arrived on mule back up this stone stairway. The tiny hamlet of some 100 residents keeps its 18th-century chapel and pergola terraces above the Positano cliff.
Positano's water-powered mills ground grain and, from the 1600s, pulped rag for paper that supplied Amalfi's presses. Abandoned stone shells with intact millrace channels survive in the ravine above the village, slowly swallowed by ferns.
The hilltop hamlet is named for the pierced rock above it, said in local legend to have been punched through by the Madonna in a contest with the devil. The feast on 2 July re-enacts it with fireworks lit inside the hole.