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Amalfi’s town square is immediately in front of – and below – the cathedral.
We had just been uninvited “guests” (but welcomed) at a big, cheerful Italian wedding.
There was no shortage of invited guests, but once they stepped down into the (very public) square they were comprehensively outnumbered by tourists.
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The featured image captures the moment when the wedding photographers’ barrage had just ceased, at 6.21 pm.
Now relaxed, the wedding party was about to descend the steps from the cathedral to Amalfi’s town square.
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At 6.20 pm on 07 September 2023, the wedding party’s group photos were taken.
I was standing several steps below the front of the cathedra, on my right-hand side of the steps.
As is obvious in my photo, the “official” wedding photographers were all standing well to my left.
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Shortly before the “proper” wedding photographers set to organising the wedding party’s “group” photos, I descended a few of the cathedral’s stairs.
I dislike posed, “1,2,3 – everybody, say cheese!” photographs, and am usually bored witless by them.
However, watching what goes on around the taking of such photos is another story – often, a much more interesting one.
As you’ll see in this series’ next chapter, the amused “boy blue” – “off camera”, or so he imagined, at the moment that only my camera was pointed at him – would soon be summoned to the top of the stairs, along with other members of the wedding party.
The photo below looks up, shortly before the “proper” photographers and wedding party were ready for the “group” picture-taking.
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At 6.18 pm on 07 September 2023 the newly-weds looked out into the early evening air, and down to the large number of wedding guests who had spilled out onto the cathedral’s steps and across the near edge of Amalfi’s town square.
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I love the fact that very “public” events contain so many “private” moments.
Presumably, my photo captures the bride and her father, relishing a moment of mutual, wry amusement – one that looks like it verges on “complicity”. (If he is not her father, the bride already enjoys a close bond with the man who has just become her father-in-law)
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On entering the cathedral, we soon realised that we had walked into the latter part of a “big” Italian wedding.
Our presence was not in any way “discouraged”; an interesting event it certainly was, but I thought it would be inappropriate for me to photograph it.
The wedding-proper completed, the newlyweds, their families and friends then walked out into the wider world.
At that point, I thought it would be “socially acceptable” for me to attempt to “capture” the scene. (and it soon became apparent that “strangers” paying non-intrusive attention to their “big day” was enthusiastically welcomed by those directly involved in it)
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Description, courtesy of Wikipedia:
In 1861, part of the facade collapsed, damaging the atrium. The whole front of the church was then rebuilt to a design by architect Errico Alvino in a richly decorated manner drawing on Italian Gothic and especially Arab-Norman styles, similar to but more ornate than the original.
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Construction began around twelve centuries ago, but most of what a 21st century visitor sees when looking at Amalfi Cathedral (aka “Duomo di Amalfi” and “Duomo di Sant’Andrea”) is of much more recent vintage.
Allegedly, it has housed the “relics” of St Andrew (Sant’Andrea) since not long after “Crusaders” delivered them from Constantinople to Amalfi in 1206 CE.
Many a “landmark” Italian church has a “medieval” exterior, now ill-matched with a lavishly reworked, much more ornate, “Baroque” interior.
Over the centuries, Amalfi’s cathedral has become a riotously eclectic hybrid of very different styles. (and of different buildings, joined together, repaired, and re-imagined)
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Its “permanent” population of circa 5,000 people is around the same size as Naracoorte’s, or circa half that of the Australian Portland.
Naracoorte is a prosperous South Australian country town; Portland is Victoria’s oldest “European” settlement.
The post’s actually-European town is very much older than any Australian one.
its population and power peaked circa one thousand years ago.
Its eponymous republic was then a significant maritime power, trading in many “things”, including enslaved humans.
Tourism-wise, its “peak” is circa right now, and it is stratospherically beyond Naracoorte’s or Portland’s wildest dreams…or nightmares.
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