POSITANO, CHIESA NUOVA AREA
Villa Cocles is situated in the CHIESA NUOVA area. Named after the rebuilted church in XVIII, is the most ancient part of Positano.
Locals always preferred to settle upper, away from the direct sea risks. Only after, when Positano changed from a rural town into a fisherman town, new houses started to spreads down.
CHIESA NUOVA manteins its local origins, with its fruit and vegetables shop, butcher, fish market. Go to the cozy Bar Internazionale and have breakfast chatting with locals and feel yourself a bit Positanese!
JOHN STEINBECK WROTE:
Positano's history is long, rich and also quite strange; one thing is certainn, however: it started a lond time ago. When Emperor Tiberius moved to Capri bacause he was disliked in Rome. He did not trust anybody. He was afraid everyone wanted to poison him and perhaps he was right. He did not want bread made with local flour; therefore his three-oar boat went along the coast of Positano. This small center has had a remarkable past as part of the Amalfi Republic....in competition with Venice. In the XVII centuries Positano became enormously rich. Its ships arrived everywhere, traded with the near and Middle East, brought spices, silk and precious woods, greatly requested in the West.
It was at that time that the beautiful Baroque houses still standing against the mountains and decorated with the best things found around the world, were built.
(from "Harper's Bazaar" 1953)