Valle delle Ferriere

Behind Amalfi's seafront the mountains open into a cool, water-carved valley where streams fall through pools, pre-glacial ferns survive on dripping rock and the ruins of paper mills line the current. The Valle delle Ferriere is the coast's industrial and botanical memory, and its final stretch is a strict nature reserve.

Why it matters

The Valle delle Ferriere, a UNESCO heritage unit between Scala and Amalfi that includes Pontone, preserves the industrial and natural history of the coast. Streams fed by the Chiarito powered the paper industry, while the humid microclimate preserved rare plant species. The canyon cuts through Cretaceous and Jurassic limestone.

What to notice

Plants on the wet rock walls include Woodwardia radicans, a fern of Tertiary-era subtropical flora, Pteris cretica, Pteris vittata and the carnivorous Pinguicula hirtiflora. Along the watercourses grow maidenhair and hart's-tongue ferns, while riparian zones include Neapolitan alder and Corsican heather (Erica terminalis). Industrial remains include multi-storey paper mills: the Milano mill retains machinery on three floors; the Lucibelli mill rises six floors above the water; and the ruins of the Nolli and Treglia mills attest to the valley's paper industry. Vault forms date from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The valley also includes the ruins of the twelfth-century church of Sant'Eustachio.

Context and history

The valley's name recalls its ironworks, the ferriere that once hammered metal here, though the buildings that dominate the valley today are the paper mills that made Amalfi a European centre of fine paper. Water was diverted through rear canals and sluice gates into conical collection towers, and the pounding machines reduced rags to pulp; the UNESCO portal's inventory also records a soap factory, a Bourbon-era ironworks, a confetti works, a lime kiln, a gunpowder factory and an early hydroelectric plant, most operating into the first half of the twentieth century. Decline left the structures to ivy and collapse, and a paper mill near Amalfi's centre survives in better shape as the town's Museum of Paper. The valley's final stretch is designated an integral nature reserve to protect its rare flora.