Salerno

When I planned this trip to Southern Italy and looked at guidebooks to figure out what cities and towns I wanted to visit, Salerno didn’t make the cut. It wasn’t even close. But transportation played a hand.

Getting to my next intended destination after Sorrento, where I was this morning, required going to Salerno to catch the first of three trains on the journey. That train leaves at 9:25 in the morning.

The best way to get from Sorrento to Salerno that I could find requires taking two different ferries run by different companies. I think there are better options in the high season, when ferry and train schedules are more frequent and comprehensive. But this is early April. It’s not yet the high season yet.

I had the choice of making the ferry connection in either Positano or Amalfi. I chose Amalfi because it gave me a little longer connection time in case things went wrong.

The ferry I took from Sorrento to Amalfi was pretty much full. It made a stop at Positano to let a lot of people off and let a lot of other people on.

I guess that offloading and boarding took longer than expected because by the time the ferry arrived in Amalfi harbour it was a little more than 25 minutes after the scheduled Amalfi arrival time. My connection time was originally 50 minutes. That still left me almost 25 minutes.

I had a ticket that I bought online for the ferry from Amalfi to Sorrento, but I had to exchange that for a boarding pass. Although, it’s a small port. How far could the office be?

I said the ferry arrived in the harbour a little more than 25 minutes after the scheduled arrival time. But I didn’t say it docked at the pier then. For some unknown reason, I imagine to wait for the berth to clear, the boat sat out in the harbour for ten minutes or so.

By the time the boat docked and I was able to get off, there were only a little more than ten minutes to go before my next ferry.

I don’t want you to imagine for a second—not even a nanosecond—that this made me nervous. No, no. Anyone who knows me or anyone who’s read this journal faithfully knows for certain that I would be nervous, with nervous being a gross understatement. So there’s no point in you wasting any time whatsoever imagining it. Just take it as a given.

I got off the boat as quickly as I could. Immediately after I exited the pier I saw the office for the company running my ferry to Salerno right there. I got my boarding pass and went back on the pier with about three or four minutes to spare before they started boarding the ferry.

Phew. That was close.

Both of the ferries kept within easy eyeshot of the coast. It’s one long mountain ridge and quite beautiful. Wherever there’s a bit of a dip in the ridge and the slope eases to something just barely suitable for building on, there’s a city or town there. The whole journey was quite picturesque.

The ferry I was on from Sorrento to Amalfi was almost full both before and after Positano. I sat by a window not suitable for picture-taking and two people sat in seats next to me, blocking the aisle. So I didn’t get up to take pictures on that journey. But the ferry from Amalfi to Salerno was less than half full. I got a couple of pictures on that ride. I’ve posted one above.

Salerno

The edifices facing the Salerno port are uninspiring residential buildings. Dull colours. Fairly plain design. I didn’t count, but I think those buildings range from about six to 12 storeys. They’re not in any way ugly, but, meh.

My hotel is about a five to ten-minute walk from the port. It’s right beside the train station. My primary reason for coming to Salerno was to catch a train. I figured a hotel near the station made sense.

After checking in, it was time for a late lunch. Pizza and wine served that purpose.

I then went out and did some exploring. The sole guidebook I have with a section on Salerno recommends only three sights here: The Salerno Cathedral, The Provincial Archaeological Museum, and the Castello di Arechi (Arachi Castle). That’s it. (Now you know why Salerno wasn’t originally on my list of places to visit.)

The first two are within a twenty-minute walk from my hotel. According to Google Maps, the third is an hour-and-11-minute walk from my hotel. Or there’s a bus I can catch from somewhere if I can figure out the bus ticket system here. That would have taken me 21 minutes. I got kind of castled out in Naples, so I didn’t make the effort to visit Arachi Castle. But I did visit the museum and cathedral.

Salerno Provincial Archaeological Museum

The Salerno Provincial Archaeological Museum is small. The normal entry fee is four euros. But it was free today. I didn’t ask why that was, but I think it had to do with the repair work being done on a small section of the floor near the entrance. The construction didn’t close any of the museum, but it was quite loud and a little dusty.

The museum arranges its exhibits in roughly chronological order. All of the artifacts are from the province of Salerno. The earliest exhibits are a bone and fossilized depressions of flora dating from the far-distant prehistoric era. The rest of the items on display are human-made objects such as pottery and statuary, primarily busts.

The prized possession of the museum is a bronze bust. According to the sign accompanying it, it’s a “Bronze head identified with the god Apollo.” I can’t tell you how closely the head captures Appolo’s true features. Maybe that’s why the sign says “identified with” rather than “of.”

According to the sign, the nature of the edge of the bottom of the head suggests that it once belonged to a fuller statue. I hate it when gods lose their heads like that. Then again, I guess he lost his body but kept his head. So, good on him. Keeping your head is a positive thing.

Salerno Cathedral

Entry to the Salerno Cathedral* is through an austere, imposing, cloistered, stone-floored courtyard. There wasn’t much to it, but I still found it impressive. It provides a dramatic front to the cathedral.

* The linked website is in Italian and I couldn’t find a link to an English version. Use the translate function of your browser if you, like me, need it.

To me, the main nave of the Salerno is quite bland. The pillars and arches above them have some carved decorations, but they are monochrome—generally eggshell white on eggshell white. The altar area is decorated but in quite dark colours.

The side aisles are what make the cathedral as far as I’m concerned. There are small side chapels along both sides. Those chapels have paintings, statues, and/or relic repositories.

And the chapels at the end of each aisle are the best features. Both have frescoes on the walls. Both also have a half-dome ceiling (a dome sliced on the vertical axis with the concave shell facing the aisle.) In one, that half-dome is decorated with a fresco. On the other, it’s decorated with a bright, shiny tile mosaic.

There’s a crypt underneath the cathedral. It is the opposite of bland. Bright colours of many hues hit you as soon as you walk in, with paintings on the ceilings, intricate patterns on the walls and columns, and a dramatic altarpiece.

This is the second time on this trip that I’ve experienced a relatively bland church with an eye-popping crypt below. The first one was the Cattedrale di Sant’Andrea in Amalfi. I always thought it was crypts that were supposed to be sombre. It’s almost like the designers of those crypts were saying, “Yahoo! They’re dead. Let’s celebrate boisterously.”

Entry into the Cathedral was not free. They offered the choice of a one-, two-, or three-attraction ticket.

The three attractions were the Salerno Cathedral, the cathedral museum, and the Church of San Giorgio. I decided to skip the museum, but I bought a two-attraction ticket and went to the Church of San Giorgio. So, a bonus that wasn’t mentioned in my guidebook.

Church of San Giorgio

The Church of San Giorgio was consecrated in 1674 and was in a monastery. Today, the Salerno police use the monastery building as one of their facilities. But the church still stands as a church, I think primarily for tourism these days.

The church is quite small, but while the central nave of the Salerno Cathedral is, at least in terms of colour, quite unadorned, the Church of San Giorgio is, well, not. Pretty well every square centimetre of the walls and ceilings is decorated with colourful paintings or patterns.

Wandering Salerno

I also did some wandering around Salerno. I found the streets mostly clean, but not particularly interesting. However, I did find one block of one street that had a couple of residential buildings that I found visually pleasing. The first was painted a colour that I think you’d call mustard yellow. The second, which immediately abutted the first, was painted what I think you’d call, burnt orange and it had some Juliet balconies.

Although, having said that, I have to admit that I’m lousy at identifying the names of anything other than the most common definitions of primary and immediate secondary colours—red, yellow, blue; green, orange, purple, etc.. (Yeah, sticklers, I know. There are other definitions.) Mustard yellow and burnt orange might not be the correct names for the colours of the buildings. They might be neon green and fluorescent pink. I’ll post a picture so you can judge.

There is a nice promenade along much of Salerno’s waterfront. Or, more accurately, three parallel, adjacent promenades. One runs immediately beside the sea, with just a railing and a bit of a drop separating it from the water. The promenade beside the waterside one runs between two parallel rows of trees. The outer promenade has a row of low bushes between it and the road that runs beside it.

The promenades were quite pleasant. It would have been even more pleasant if a chunk of it weren’t fenced off. From the signs on the fence, I think they’re going to build an underground garage there, but it’s possible the sign was advertising something else.

And so ends Salerno for me. I’m not thoroughly disappointed that I felt the need to stop here for transportation reasons. But, were it not for the need to catch a train tomorrow, knowing what I know now, I still wouldn’t put it on my list of places to visit unless I had an awful lot of time to spend in Southern Italy. It seems like a very good place to live, but there’s not much for tourists here as far as I can tell.

True, Salerno has the coast. Which is a big plus for a city. But from Naples, around the coast to Sorrento, around the other side of the peninsula to the Amalfi Coast, and on to Salerno just past the mainland end of the peninsula on the southeast side (not to mention all the coast roughly south from there) is all seaside. In my opinion, there are more interesting, picturesque towns and cities for tourists to stay.

Heck, there are hotels in Pompeii that seem nice based on their websites and online ratings. Pompeii is also on the coast. But, well, you know, Pompeii. Be still, Vesuvius. Be still.

It sounds like I’m putting Salerno down. I don’t mean to do that. As I said just two paragraphs ago, it looks like a very good, maybe great, place to live. But as a tourist, you can do better.