A real working fishing village at the coast’s eastern end: no boutiques, no crush, just boats, a watchtower, and the best anchovies in Italy.
Why a day here
Cetara is the coast without the costume, a tuna-and-anchovy town that never became a resort. You come to eat: colatura di alici, the amber anchovy sauce that descends straight from Roman garum, poured over spaghetti at the source. It’s the most unshowy meal on the coast.
A tight cluster of houses around a working harbour, under a sixteenth-century Angevin watchtower. The boats still go out for tuna in summer, and the town runs on fishing, not tourism, which is the whole appeal. A small beach, a couple of piazzas, and trattorias that take the catch seriously.
Spaghetti alla colatura di alici, and the tuna if it’s the season; the Torre di Cetara out on the point; and the majolica-domed church of San Pietro. In high summer the town throws a night-long tuna festival and the Notte delle Lampare, named for the old lamp-boats.
The name may come from cetaria, the Latin for a tuna station. The Romans salted fish here and made garum, the pungent sauce that flavoured the empire. Colatura di alici is its direct descendant, still made the old way: anchovies layered with salt in chestnut barrels and pressed for months. Cetara guards the recipe like treasure.
Cetara on the map