“It’s a Dall sheep!” the train tour guide exclaims as we swoop past a jagged cliffside dotted with fuzzy white creatures impressively balanced on their rocky perch.
Lonely Planet’s guide to navigating overtourism on the Amalfi Coast
27.09.2024 - 11:37 / lonelyplanet.com / John Steinbeck
Sep 25, 2024 • 12 min read
When Positano bit John Steinbeck deep, it was a sleepy fishing village painted in pastels that playfully masked a forbidding cliffside. Turkeys might fly into the sea and dandies could mingle with carpenters, all driven to the same near delirium that can only come from too many days in too beautiful a place. In Steinbeck’s day, finding the Amalfi Coast was like waking up in a dream you couldn’t possibly have invented, a place entirely worthy of its nickname “La Divina”.
These days, that singular beauty is more often the backdrop for what feels more like Amalfi cosplay, a lemon-scented simulacrum that never seems to measure up to our imaginations. The pastel houses flicker or fade according to a photographer’s filter, while an ever-increasing surge of travelers jostle their way under bougainvillea-covered alleys, often sacrificing common decency to find the best shot. We still want to believe in it because we know how special it is, but where getting here was once the greatest challenge in realizing that Amalfi Coast dream, today the biggest problem is, well, everyone else.
The Amalfi Coast is becoming a symbol of all that is wrong with travel. This tiny hamlet, perched on the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast, is not alone. Over decades, tourism has exploded unchecked in towns, cities, islands, and forests that were never meant to carry such a heavy human load. Many of these places have adapted; some have mutated.
And in many cases, tourists and locals have become adversaries, making it harder to find the joy or the benefit in being (or visiting) a popular destination.
“People arrive on the coast dreaming of crystalline beaches and colorful postcard villages,” says Francesca Coppola, a researcher working on overtourism and destination management at the University of Venice who returned to her native Sorrento hoping to develop workable solutions. “Instead, they’re met with endless traffic, accommodation in Positano that costs on average €500 a day, porters who charge €15 to climb 100 stairs with your luggage, and meals that can cost €150 per person. That’s not sustainable for anyone.”
Moreover, the thirteen towns on the Amalfi Coast that people mostly visit are linked by a very narrow system of roads or seasonal ferries, so a bottleneck in one place can easily overwhelm another. Try waiting for the 8am bus from Amalfi to tiny Agerola, a sprawling town high up on the mountains that’s become the de facto starting point for the Path of the Gods, and you'll see the problem.
Hiking guides like Alessandro di Benedetto of Amalfi Coast Hikes know the challenges and even dangers of having too many people walking one narrow trail, and he also points out the futility of it. “I’d never say that Path
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