I. Topography
The urban structure of the Amalfi Coast towns
The urban models of the towns are the combined product of constraints stemming from the morphology of the land and influences and suggestions from various historical ages which forged the territory and sculpted the landscape while, at the same time, reflecting the needs associated with local conditions. Along the coast, built-up areas are nested in the rifts formed by torrents or on the sheer sides of ravines and mountain slopes in the fashion of pyramids of houses seemingly built one on top of the other within a labyrinth of small alleys, cul-de-sacs or covered alleyways, flights of stairs that open up onto small courtyards in a continuous and fascinating confusion of ups and downs, inside and outside, common and private. At the base of the pyramid is the main church and the thoroughfare that runs along the valley line; at the top, the urban fabric fades at first into clusters of houses gathered around smaller churches and wastes away into the citrus fruit orchards that cover the hillside. Urban settlements developed according to a unique pattern that gave the territory a sort of unitary wholeness deriving paradoxically from a closely-knit succession of larger built-up areas which sprawl out into a myriad of smaller hamlets dotting the hillside at different altitudes and varying distances from each other, and each of which seems to live an autonomous, distinctive life of its own. Houses strewn across rural areas, grouped around a church, gathered around a square or a small courtyard: smaller or larger houses revealing the presence of man amongst vegetable gardens, vineyards and right up to the very verge of the woodland. Despite architectural variety, with span roofs taking the place of airy Mediterranean ones, the basic shapes and structures are consistent with the models developed during the historical process which has moulded the territory's unmistakable topography ever since the classical age, through the Byzantine period and right up to the days of the dukedom in the Middle Ages.

II. Toponymy
Place names bring back to mind and suggest, merge and put the last touches on the image and the shape of places, denoting and at the same time connoting them. Toponymy is an unexplored legacy suspended between history and legend where nymphs and heroes, Greek slaves and Roman noblemen, miracles and uprisings, pirates and fishermen, ancient lost cities and vanished trades, saints and rich landowners, soldiers in transit, peoples in flight and transmigrant ethnic groups relive. Some names that survive are evidence of images and suggestions of landscapes of a distant past, frozen in the mind's eye of those who first gazed on them and gave them their names. Others evoke the force of the elements, a ring of mountains or sheer rock face, the placid bays and tiny beaches. Toponymy is a journey into the history and geography of the territory, in quest of the meanings that underlie myth and reality.