The role of terraces in the vertical development of Amalfi Cost urban centers

The little centers of the Amalfi Coast have an inherent delicacy of their architectural, artistic and urban values, result of strenuous conquests over the centuries. Their development is purely vertical and not random, but it represents an architectural ideal that, with other qualities like geometry, symmetry, the variety of shapes and colors, has allowed the inclusion of the 40 km of Coastline in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997. The verticality is given by the agricultural terraces, which determined the shape and development of the coastal towns, far from any technical and stylistic coding. The terraces are the result of constructive knowledges, traditional agricultural and hydraulic systems that, together with landscape and climatic conditions, created a system with high aesthetic quality and seamless integration with the nature. This paper traces the role that the terraces in the Amalfi Coast had in the evolution of towns and villages, hidden in valleys, ravines and hillsides overlooking the sea. Along with the features of identity and evolutionary aspects of the built environment, they become part of the eternal value of which the centers are keepers, result of a natural combination between architecture and nature, fusion of the town with the landscape of the sea and the mountain, in order to protect them as ‘active memory’ of places and territories.