During the time of the Republic of Amalfi, Maiori was the heart of maritime trade. The wide bay was full of vegetable gardens and gardens and the economy was mainly based on agriculture. In 1954, a terrible flood destroyed the town and the reconstruction changed its appearance. Together with rural life, the people of Maiori lost their memory, but some still preserve it, perhaps for the last generation. A journey between the land and the sea of ​​the Amalfi Coast, a window on the present that opens onto a past rich in culture and memory that is still alive.

In the mountains of Maiori, a town on the Amalfi Coast, an ancient world survives that has escaped the transformations of modernity. In the woods overlooking the sea, lemon pickers, muleteers and shepherds live a life outside of time according to the customs and traditions that have belonged to this land for centuries. A few meters from the seashore, Maiori is a modern tourist town: buildings, beach resorts and a population that lives far from that ancient world from which it comes and that it ignores as if it did not exist.
In the soul of the “new” Maiori residents there is an open wound, caused by the transformation of the town following the flood of the Reginna Major river, which in 1954 destroyed vegetable gardens and gardens by the sea. During the reconstruction, the vegetable gardens became concrete buildings and the beaches hotels and shops that erased rural life. Cristina remembers the sulphurous water that was sold in the middle of the street, the power of the uncontaminated sea and the reconstruction of the maritime soil of the corner coast area, the only place not besieged today by the tourism business.
Teresa D’Amato belongs to one of the ancient families of Maiori, she lived through the transformation of her town, the landing of the American allies, the flood and the reconstruction. The Liciccone family lives off the harvest of their lemon grove, one of the oldest in the area. The scratched arms of the working women mark a slow and constant rhythm of those who for generations have worked a wonderful and bitter land at the same time. Pietro was the biggest lemon trader in the area, when women carried them on their shoulders to the beach and ships took them to England. After the flood of 1954, the town changed its appearance in just a few years, farmers and fishermen lost their lands and beaches, forced to emigrate or become lifeguards and waiters. The history of Ciccio’s family has gone hand in hand with the transformation of the town. Son of farmers who became emigrants and then lifeguards, Ciccio manages a small strip of beach that has remained free in Maiori, the Costa D’Angolo beach, keeping alive the love for his town and giving back to the people of Maiori a piece of their memory.