A large rock, just detached from the mainland, divides the Amalfi Coast from the Sorrento one. An apparently invisible border breaks through the waves of a deep sea.
Ph. Enrico Nocera
It's called Germano and it's an almost 30 meters high "faraglione", that is a big rock standing in the middle of the sea. It stands about 15 meters away from the homonymous promontory of Punta Germano. A width that allows the sailing between the earth and the rock. The large number of horizontal calcareous layers drawn by the sea created a colossal human bust which excited the imagination of travelers.
In 1620 in the Atlas of Italy the cartographer Giovanni Antonio Magini mentioned it as Jermenello, but already in the early 1900s it took the current name of Germano. After the war, the people of Positano called it Adenauer because, looking at it from west to east, it seemed the profile of the German chancellor, among the founders of the European Community. Today, some fishermen identify it with Garibaldi's head, while for tourists it is the Indian rock.
The magnificent winding roads overlooking the sea of the Amalfi Coast | Ph. Enrico Nocera
Germano is visible only from the sea and from a few points on the coast. From the Piano di Sorrento viewpoint, for example, where the wonderful coast road to Positano starts. Or from the top of Monte Vico Alvano, where a plateau opens up into the void. It is perhaps the most impervious and wild tract of the coast in the whole Sorrento Peninsula: the few houses overlooking the sea are swallowed by the Mediterranean vegetation and only with a boat you can enjoy the pleasure of a dip.
A kayak landed into the beach of Marinella della Calcara | Ph. Davide Discolo
To its right is the beach of Tordigliano, the most crowded in summer, reachable through a windy path. A little further on is the small beach of Marinella della Calcara, so named for the presence of an ancient oven for cooking limestone, used today as a landing place by fishermen and some lucky kayaker.
All around the sea is intense blue and reflects the colors of the pebbles collected on the shore and the shades of the jagged rocks a little further away. Beyond the promontory, however, you can glimpse the first picturesque houses of Positano and you can embrace the whole bay with your gaze... an unexpected explosion of joy and colors!
The beaches of Tordigliano and Marinella della Calcara with its old oven | Ph. Enrico Nocera
Punta Germano is the border of the Punta Campanella Park, the large protected marine area populated by turtles and dolphins. It is the titanic natural compass of night fishermen looking for squids. It is a border for mariners, along a peninsula that links two different coastal worlds: the Sorrento habitat, whose delicate country smells mix with the pungent scents of the sea, and the Amalfi coast, with its fairy-tale villages, made up of messes of white houses dotted with majolica cupolas.
Ph. Enrico Nocera
Swimming in the water darkened by the shadow of a stone giant is not so reassuring. Yet Germano stands there, motionless, inspecting at the horizon like a lighthouse without lights. To observe, with its threatening gaze carved in the rock, the predators of his beloved Sorrento Peninsula.