Apulica — Taste Travel Together
Amalfi seen from the sea

APULICA / Campania

Slow Campania, from Irpinia to the Cilento

Apulica’s Campania is not about big cities or mass tourism: it is inland Irpinia with its wines and villages, the Picentini mountains, the Cilento between national park and sea, and an Amalfi Coast explored on foot. The journey follows one theme at a time, devoting each day to a few places.

Amalfi seen from the sea. A contextual photograph of a place connected with this story. · Photo: Wolfgang Moroder / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Resized and converted to WebP.

Four Campanias, one at a time

Irpinia invites you to read wine and inland villages; the Picentini mountains are woods, springs and hill towns; the Cilento combines a national park, archaeological sites and a long coastline; the Amalfi Coast is best taken slowly, away from the busiest hours. It is better to choose one or two per journey rather than cross the region as a list of names.

Wine as a way to read the territory

According to the Campania Region, Irpinia is the cradle of fine wines such as Taurasi, made from Aglianico, Fiano di Avellino and Greco di Tufo, all DOCG. They are three different ways into inland Campania, starting from the link between a designation and its landscape rather than from a single bottle.

Sources: Regione Campania — Vini DOP, DOCG e IGP

The Mediterranean diet and the Cilento

In 2013 the Mediterranean diet was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, in a nomination shared by seven countries. For Italy the reference community is the Cilento. The listing describes a body of skills, rituals and traditions running from farming and fishing to the shared table.

Sources: UNESCO — Mediterranean diet

Places to explore

Walks through here

Sentiero Italia CAI (sections in Abruzzo, Molise, Puglia, Basilicata, Campania and Calabria)

Reggio Calabria, where the trail returns to the mainland (stage SI U01) → Campotosto in Abruzzo (stage SI P13), from where the national trail continues towards Amatrice and beyond · About 8,000 km for the whole national trail according to the official project page (the FAQ gives 7,900–8,000 km). The CAI does not state the combined length of the sections in these six regions; for Calabria alone italia.it gives 654 km. · For the whole trail the FAQ speaks of more than 500 stages, while the project page mentions almost 400 stage points. The stage-card list shows 120 cards with codes P to U, variants included (R04 is missing). For Calabria italia.it gives 34 stages, while the CAI list has 32 Calabrian cards (U01–U32).

Calabria, Basilicata, Campania, Puglia, Molise, Abruzzo

Via Francigena in Southern Italy

Rome → Santa Maria di Leuca · more than 900 km from Rome to Santa Maria di Leuca · No reachable source gives the overall number of stages. In Puglia the regional guide splits its four described itineraries into 5, 5, 6 and 7 walking days.

Puglia, Campania

Places of faith