Between history and culture
7 generations in the service of Nature
An old woman carrying a box with the day’s harvest dries her sweat. He looks up at the sun over his head, then beyond the terracing the vastness of Nature on the Amalfi Coast
The Amalfi Monumental Garden is one of the earliest terraced gardens in Amalfi, dating back to 700 AD.
Built astride the walls of the Maritime Republic of Amalfi, it is located under the Monumental Cemetery and at the aqueduct of San Lorenzo Al Piano. It was here that the system that brought water from Scala to Amalfi arrived, thanks to a complex system carved partly into the rock.
Along with the Bishop’s and Curia Gardens, the Monumental Garden is one of the first vegetable gardens to be subservient to the city’s food needs. It was located outside the wall, relics of which are still preserved. Examples of typical crop terracing from pre-Romanesque times are found here. In the historical documentation found at the turn of 1000 to 1100 AD, the various constructions and reconstructions carried out are reported, including the ingenious rainwater collection system that was essential for cultivation on the terraces. Urban settlements were also found here, also shown in the medieval model preserved in the Ancient Arsenals of the Republic.
A young man smiles wearily after a day that began at dawn, spent climbing up and down the steps outlined in the mountain to move from one terrace to another. His golden lemons that he would soon harvest lit up the valley more than the sun.
The first lemon plants arrived from the Far East in 900 AD at the hands of Amalfi sailors. Their cultivations on terraces, which will indelibly sculpt the mountain profiles of the Amalfi Coast, to the point of becoming an Intangible Heritage of Humanity, are evidence of heroic agriculture.
A story that reaches to this day
The garden has been the subject of meticulous ordinary and extraordinary maintenance works over the past 30 years aimed at preserving and conserving this cultural-rural heritage of our civilization in the best possible way.
At the top there is a water catchment basin (called a fishpond) subservient to the garden for drip irrigation. It is here that we passionately guard and cultivate the last multi-hundred-year-old plants of Limone Sfusato Amalfitano.
The entire farm is cultivated using the traditional method of certified organic farming, with integrated organic pest management.