On the Corso (high street) we pass piazza Raffaele D'Amato and find ourselves before a large building of Ochre yellow:

 

Palazzo Mezzacapo

Built at the end of the XIX century for the noble family Mezza Capo, it is actually site of the communal offices and the tourist bureau,( with access to the gardens). Inside in pure style of the Risorgimento, the "Salon of Mirrors", and a magnificent ceiling frescoed with "Triumph of the Olympic Gods", and many paintings by the "Costaioli Painters"…

Before leaving the Palace, marvellous and unique of their type the "eighteenth century gardens".
Designed as a Maltese cross by order of Filippo Mezzacapo (Chevalier of Malta, who had to leave the order to marry and continue the dynasty). Pathways lined with rose bushes that face large pools filled by a ramification of the river Reginna: a bizarre strategy to enjoy a little freshness in the summer months.

We cannot speak of the palace without mentioning "o'Marchese 'e Majiure" the eccentric person who became proverbial for his habit of going to the window, then facing the sun and proclaiming : "When I have eaten all the world is sated"…

 

 

i Costaioli
(the Coastal Painters)

Active between the second half of the '800 and the first thirty years of the '900: Gaetano e Luigi Capone, Angelo Della Mura, Manfredi Nicoletti, Raffaele D'Amato, Luigi Paolillo, Antonio Ferrigno, Luca Albino, Gaetano Cimini, Ulderico Forcellino, Enrico ed Ignazio Lucibello, Antonio Rocco e Paolo Caruso brought to the International art scene a breath of colour, of joy but at the same time an intimacy that caught the attention of critics and artists of all schools. Some of these artists came to Maiori to meet and exchange experience, and also to learn.

The painters of Maiori rather than a true school had a mode of painting, a proposal. The painters of the South participated in the difficult moment that European culture was passing through at that time, torn between academy mannerism and open-air impressionism.

A large number of their works enrich private collections all over the world, works on public view can be admired in many churches and in the Palace Mezza Capo where you will find valuable works of Capone and Albino, of this artist in particular the superb "View of the Coast seen from Maiori", an unusual viewpoint: " … synthesis of the large repertory offered by the nature of Maiori"(Bignardi).

Back on the corso after a hundred metres we take via Pedementina on the left and cross the piazza Mercato, at the back, the door to the Convent of the Domenican Sisters, erected in the XVII century, it preserves a marvellous "Madonna of Constantinople"…

 

Convento e Chiesa del SS. Rosario

Back on the corso after a few metres at the cross roads take via Roma until the monumental complex of S.Domenico actually being repaired Convent and Church of S.Domenico.
Built in the second half of the XVII century, the convent was seat of philosophy, theology, mathematics and philology, with a large well stocked library. Abandoned after the abolition laws, the buildings were later used as a prison, a district court, and on the occasion of the allied landings in 1943 as a camp hospital…it was finally closed after the terrible earthquake in 1980. In the magistrates court there is a wall mural by the "Costaiolo" Gaetano Capone, dated 1895.

Nearby the beautiful church of "SS.Rosario", in Baroque style , rich with paintings and sacred furnishings…

 

Straight ahead on the via Nuova Chiunzi, that we follow to the north for two hundred metres to S.Pietro, the first ward of Maiori. Taking the steps we come into the magnificent square in front of

S. Pietro in Posula

We are now at the point where in the VII century the Etruscans founded the first Reghinna. Here stood the temple of the god Vertumno, razed to the ground by Christian fervour in about the IV century and substituted with the actual Basilica, that contains a fine statue of the Apostle…

Passing through the viaduct at the end of the square, we come to the river Regina and return onto the via Vecchia per Chiunzi…. At about 600 metres the hamlet of

S. Maria delle Grazie

The part that remains of the three nave Basilica of the VI century, reconstructed in the 1700's and again after the terrible floods of 1910…

Inside a "Visitation" of the fifteenth century and a "Crucifixion" of the school of Sabatini…

 

Another hundred metres and we cross via Nuova Chiunzi, we are now in Vecite, second ward of Maiori;

A few metres and on the right, the steep via S.Martino and on the crest the Romanesque church of S. Martino Vescovo that holds a eighteenth century statue of the Saint, and a small painting on metal of the Madonna del Carmine…

 

 

Straight ahead for seven or eight hundred metres and we arrive at Ponteprimario: the ancient "Pons Primarius", where the population of Reghinna took refuge after the reprisals of Silla against those who opposed him in the Social Wars (I century B.C.)…

 

Madonna del Principio

We take the road that goes down to the left in the direction of a group of houses, via Parrocchiale, a few metres through the hamlet and we reach the church of Madonna del Principio, of the VII century but rebuilt many times, it holds a wooden statue of the Madonna work of a shepherd in the XIII, lost and then miraculously found, dug up by a farm worker …