Montepertuso’s Hole, you say?
Is it a 90’s Italian rock band? No.
Perhaps it is a deep well that leads to the center of the earth? Nothing so dramatic as that!
Montepertuso is a little town on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, just barely north of beautiful Positano. Montepertuso is easily reached from Positano, either by bus, car, or walking - but I would recommend walking. The views are spectacular, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea and Positano itself.
Ben, his brother Matthew, and I stumbled across Montepertuso quite unintentionally, and enjoyed the quaintness and relative quiet of the town, when compared to bustling tourism of Positano. But what I really enjoyed was our little hike to Montepertuso’s Hole. In the mountain above Montepertuso, visible from quite a distance away, is a hole piercing the stone face. While geologically formed, legend has it that it was in this place that the devil & the Virgin Mary faced off, and the hole was caused by Mary’s finger going through the mountain, leading to the defeat of the snake.
I took a photo of Montepertuso’s Hole as we walked up the road to town, but it was only after happening upon a sign that pointed upwards that we realized that we could hike there. It was a beautiful, warm October day and so we decided to take the hike up to see the views from high above. It’s not a scary hike, but there are a lot of stairs and where there are no stairs, you still climb upwards on trails. Quite soon, we were sweating but after all of the amazing food we had been eating that week, the sweat and hard breathing were very welcome to our bodies.
During the hike, we passed a few very small homes, gardens with peppers and tomatoes growing, walls with wooden doors leading presumably to someone’s little yard….imagine having to hike up those stairs every time you came home with groceries, shopping, or just happened to get caught in a rainstorm! But it was just beautiful, and made me feel as if I was walking through the heart of rustic, small-village Italy.
When we reached the top of our little adventure, we were confronted with this magnificent portal carved directly through the mountain by nature. You are able to walk through the hole to the other side, where there is room to walk and photograph without getting too near the edge of the cliff. You can look up at towering stone walls that have been etched over the years by rain and wind, and you just feel small when looking down from your perch onto the towns and roads below, and the sea in the not-too-far distance. The nearby mountains had clouds lacing around their peaks under a brilliant blue sky, and the ever-present haze that permeated the Amalfi Coast during our week there made the whole scene even more magical.
For those very daring, there was a simple plank laid across a gash in the cliff face that you could walk across to see more views - but with a narrow little wooden plank with nothing under it at all to catch you should you lose your balance, I decided to forego that part of the adventure. We spent a fair amount of time up there, just enjoying the gorgeous weather, the brilliant sunshine, and the amazing views.
Should you be in Positano, I would highly recommend a visit to nearby Montepertuso, its shops, and if you’re game, a short but steep hike to Montepertuso’s Hole!
Until next time…
John