Glicine means Wisteria — the Michelin-starred restaurant at Hotel Santa Caterina is a tribute to the flower that bursts into bloom each spring, amid hand-painted Vietri majolica tiles

The Bloom of Wisteria in Amalfi: The Terrace at the Santa Caterina

In Italian, glicine means wisteria — a climbing plant with cascading clusters of violet and lilac flowers that has long been part of the Mediterranean imagination. Records of its presence in Italy date back to around 1840. With its trailing blooms, wisteria harmonizes perfectly with the Italian landscape and flourishes in its temperate coastal climate.

On the Amalfi Coast, spring is a season of wisteria in triumph. The vines climb the sunlit facades of houses perched above the sea, their pendulous flowers blending into the coastal scene — the intense purples and delicate lilacs fusing with Amalfi’s palette: the blue of the sea, which softens into paler shades near the shore, and the green of lemon groves and olive trees scattered along the hillsides.

At the Santa Caterina in Amalfi, wisteria is a symbol. On a terrace suspended above the sea, the pergola forms a living roof of violet blooms — a natural canopy that embodies the hotel’s identity and lends its name to the Michelin-starred restaurant Glicine.

Wisteria: From the East to Europe — A Brief History of the Climbing Flower

The first wisteria arrived in Europe in 1816, brought by an Englishman, Captain Welbank, aboard a merchant vessel of the East India Company. One May evening, while dining at the home of a Guangzhou trader, he found himself under a pergola of wisteria in bloom. The Chinese called the plant Zi Teng, meaning “blue vine.” Welbank obtained several seedlings and carried them back to England as a gift for his friend C. H. Turner of Rooksnet, Surrey. In Turner’s garden, three years later, in 1819, the plant flowered for the first time — and from there it spread swiftly across Europe.

Wisteria climbs by twining its stems around any available support. It can rise up to twenty meters from the ground and spread laterally to about ten. Curiously, wisterias from the Northern Hemisphere twist counterclockwise, while those from the Southern Hemisphere twine clockwise — a botanical pattern thought to be linked to Earth’s rotation.

Only in Latin countries — Italy, France, and Spain — has the plant preserved its ancient name glicine, derived from the Greek glykýs, meaning “sweet.” Linnaeus had used the term for a climbing plant introduced from America in the early 18th century — the American wisteria. When, a century later, Captain Welbank brought the Chinese variety to Europe, botanist Thomas Nuttall, unaware that the species had already been classified, named it Wistaria in honor of German anatomist and anthropologist Kaspar Wistar. In English pronunciation, the name evolved into Wisteria — the version that soon became official throughout Europe.

Hotel Santa Caterina, Amalfi

Between late April and May, wisteria takes center stage at the early 20th-century Liberty-style villa that now houses the Hotel Santa Caterina.

Driving from Salerno along the Amalfi Coast, every curve of the winding coastal road reveals a breathtaking panorama of cliffs and sea. The journey passes through Vietri sul Mare, whose Church of San Giovanni Battista, adorned with vibrant ceramic tiles, exemplifies the artistry of local craftsmanship; then Cetara, a fishing village of ancient origins. After the seaside towns of Maiori and Minori, one reaches Atrani, Italy’s smallest municipality, a web of narrow alleys and houses clinging to the rock. Finally, Amalfi appears — its architecture a tapestry of cultural influences layered over centuries. The Cathedral of Saint Andrew, with its striking Arab-Romanesque façade, stands as a symbol of this synthesis.

Just beyond the town center, set amid terraced gardens on the cliffs, stands the Santa Caterina.

The Story of the Santa Caterina — Architecture and Nature Along the Coast

The Santa Caterina property stretches for 500 meters along the coastline. While wisteria dominates the main terrace, every open-air space celebrates nature and botany — with century-old hanging gardens dense with maritime pines and terraces planted with lemons, olives, and orange trees.

In 1860, Dr. Giuseppe Gambardella transformed his family home into a small inn named Sainte Catherine, located near the site of the present hotel. In 1899, after expanding the property, disaster struck: a landslide from the nearby Cappuccini Hotel broke away from the rock, swept down the coast, and destroyed the Sainte Catherine. Giuseppe’s son, Crescenzo Gambardella, then still a teenager, began working to support his family. His mother sold a small property to purchase a safer house with a garden on the rocky coastline.

There, the family built the first six rooms of the new Hotel Santa Caterina, which opened on February 4, 1904.

Giusi and Ninni Gambardella, Crescenzo’s daughters, later took over management of the hotel and continue to guide it today, assisted by the next generation — Crescenzo Gargano, Alessandro, and Beatrice Camera.

During the Second World War, the property was occupied first by German troops and later by American forces, who established the first “Rest Camp” on the coast for convalescent officers.

Restored to its original splendor in the postwar years, the hotel entered a new phase of growth under Giusi and Ninni in the 1970s, reaching 66 rooms — 36 in the main villa and the others set along the cliffside.

In 2018, the family expanded again, purchasing a cluster of three villas about 150 meters from the hotel — Villa della Marchesa, composed of two 17th-century structures and a larger residence built in the 1950s. The villas are surrounded by an organic citrus grove and shaded by holm oaks, junipers, broom, and rare bergamot trees.

Alfredo Gravagnuolo — The Architect Behind the Santa Caterina (1946–1999)

The architectural evolution and interior design of the Santa Caterina bear the mark of Alfredo Gravagnuolo, who collaborated with the Gambardella family from 1946 to 1999. A professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Naples, Gravagnuolo also designed the hotel’s ceramic floors, personally sketching the decorative motifs.

The tiles were crafted by Ceramica Artistica Solimene of Vietri — a manufacturer renowned for preserving local craftsmanship. These ceramics embody the genius loci, the creative and artisanal spirit of the Amalfi region. The tradition dates back to the Etruscan era and reached its height in the Middle Ages, when Vietri became a major center of ceramic production and trade throughout southern Italy.

Despite changing times, Vietri’s workshops have endured, continuing to produce vibrant, hand-painted tiles that bridge past and present.

Azul Macaubas — The Blue Marble of the Glicine Restaurant

In his work for the Santa Caterina, architect Gravagnuolo incorporated a stone that evokes the color and movement of the sea — azul macaubas, a natural blue quartzite streaked with white and golden veins.

The quarries of azul macaubas — discovered relatively recently, in the 1990s — are found in Brazil’s Espírito Santo and Bahia regions. The stone quickly gained international acclaim in architecture and interior design, not only for its distinctive color but also for its exceptional technical properties: low porosity, thermal stability, and remarkable resistance to wear.

Gravagnuolo proposed using azul macaubas to finish the floors of the Glicine restaurant — the Santa Caterina’s Michelin-starred dining room, led since 2018 by Chef Giuseppe Stanzione.

Here, amid hand-painted ceramics, natural stone, and the scent of wisteria drifting in from the terrace above, Glicine is both a restaurant and a metaphor — a celebration of light, craft, and the enduring harmony between architecture and nature on the Amalfi Coast.