Excerpt from "Positano" by John Steinbeck, published in 1953


The history of Positano is rich, long and little crazy. But one thing is certain: 
it has been around a long time. When the Emperor Tiberius moved to Capri because he 
was detested in Rome, he didn’t trust anyone. He thought people were trying to poison 
him, and he was probably right. He would not eat bread made with the flour of his part 
of the country. His galley instead crept down the coast to Positano and got flour from 
a mill which still stands against the mountain side. This mill has been improved and kept 
up, of course, but it still grinds flour for the Positanese.


This little town of Positano has had a remarkable past. As part of the Republic of Amalfi 
in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, it helped to write the first maritime laws we 
know in which the rights of sailors were set down. In the tenth century it was one of the 
most important mercantile cities of the world, rivaling Venice. Having no harbor, its great 
galleys were pulled bodily up on the beach by the townspeople.


There is a story that on one Holy Saturday when no church bell was allowed to ring in all 
Christendom, a Positano ship was in trouble from a great storm. The bishop who was officiating 
at the altar declared the rule off, rang the bell himself and then joined the population on the 
beach and in his vestments helped to pull the crippled ship ashore.


Like most Italian towns Positano has its miraculous picture. It is a Byzantine representation of 
the Virgin Mary. Once, long ago, the story goes, the Saracenic pirates raided the town and among 
other things carried away this picture. But they had no sooner put to sea when a vision came to 
them which so stunned them that they returned the picture. Every year on August 15, this incident 
is re-enacted with great fury and some bloodshed. In the night the half-naked pirates attack the 
town which is defended by Positanese men-at-arms dressed in armor. Some of this fighting gets 
pretty serious. The pirates then go to the church and carry the holy picture off into the night. 
Now comes the big moment. As soon as they have disappeared into the darkness, a bright and flaming 
image of an angel appears in the sky. At present General Mark Clark is the sponsor of this miracle. 
He gave the town a surplus Air Force barrage balloon. Then very soon the pirates return in their 
boats and restore the picture to the church and everybody marches and sings and has a good time.


In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Positano became very rich. Its ships went everywhere, 
trading in the Near and Middle East, carrying the spices and precious wood the Western world craved. 
Then the large and beautiful baroque houses that stand against the mountain were built and decorated 
with the loot of the world.


About a hundred years ago a tragedy came to the town. Steamships began to ply the ocean. Positano 
could not compete; year by year it grew poorer and more desperate. At that time there were about 
eight thousand citizens. Between 1860 and 1870 about six thousand of the towns-men emigrated to 
America and great houses stood vacant and their walls crumbled and the painted designs paled out 
and the roofs fell in. The population has never got much above two thousand since. 


If Positano bites deeply into a stranger, it is branded on the Positanese. The bulk of the émigrés 
went to New York and most of them settled on Columbus Avenue. They made a little Positano of it, 
they celebrate the same festivals as the mother town, they talk Positano and live Positano. In New 
York there are over five thousand people who were born in Positano – twice as many as live in the 
mother city. Besides these there are many thousands of descendants and all of them are tied very 
closely to the Italian city.


One of the hardest duties of the mayor is trying to find graveyard space for the New York Positanese 
who want their bodies returned to their native town. The graveyard is as big as it can be. There is 
no room to extend it without blasting away the mountain. Just about every available inch is taken, 
but the mayor must edge the old-timers in some way.

About ten years ago a Moslem came to Positano, liked it and settled. For a time he was self-supporting 
but gradually he ran out of assets and still he stayed. The town supported him and took care of him. 
Just as the mayor was their only Communist, this was their only Moslem. They felt that he belonged to 
them. Finally he died and his only request was that he might be buried with his feet toward Mecca. And 
this, so Positano thought, was done. The Moslem had been buried by dead reckoning and either the compass 
was off or the map was faulty. He had been buried 28 degrees off course. This was outrageous to a seafaring 
town. The whole population gathered, dug the Moslem up, put him on course and covered him up again.