Ceramica Artistica Solimene
The facade stops you before you even reach the door. Thousands of ceramic vessels — amphoras, bottles, the round-bottomed mummarelle that once lined Roman walls — are pressed into the concrete skin of the building, their red and teal glazes catching the southern light like a mosaic that got loose and took over an entire structure. This is Paolo Soleri's only building on Italian soil, completed in 1954, and it looks like nothing else on the Amalfi Coast.
Inside, a fifteen-metre skylight pours light down through five floors connected by a helicoidal ramp. The production runs top to bottom: clay worked above, pieces descending floor by floor until they reach the ground level, where you can watch potters glazing and decorating through the workshop window.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to time it for a weekday morning, when the workshop is in full swing and the showroom is quieter. The ceramic tunnel under the road and the tiled bench across the street are easy to miss — worth crossing for. The showroom skews wholesale, but individual pieces are available.
The story behind Ceramica Artistica Solimene
Vincenzo Solimene came from a family already a century deep in Vietri's ceramic tradition when he began operating in 1947. Four years later he commissioned a young Paolo Soleri — 33 years old, not yet the architect-philosopher he would become — to design a new factory. Soleri delivered something closer to sculpture than industry: a building that incorporated the product itself into its own skin, with over 16,000 ceramic vessels embedded in the concrete facade.
The factory was completed in 1954 and remains Soleri's sole built work in Italy. The Solimene family never stopped. Solimene Art Srl, representing the fourth generation, was formalised in 2003, and Pierfrancesco Solimene, born 1986, continues to reinterpret the tradition from within it.
Good to know
Five minutes by train from Salerno, or a short walk from the Vietri sul Mare stop. No admission fee — it's a working showroom. Weekday visits give you the best chance of seeing production. Allow around 45 minutes. Winter hours are reduced.
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What travellers say about Ceramica Artistica Solimene
Worth a visit as the pottery on display is beautiful and so is the exterior of the building. Service was not friendly or helpful. Most items, except the basic ones are not for sale. And the prices are better in the sweet little town of Vietri. Left empty handed.
A bunch of awfully cute ceramics. The singing schrip plate is a jewel. I'm sad I didn't take a picture. I give it a 7.5/10 The fact that I didn't take a pic of the shrimp a 3.5/10
Sprawling ceramic production facility also displaying and selling what seemed to be seconds. Fun experience for those interested in ceramics and seeing behind the scenes. Other shops in town offer more polished wares and presentations. This place is more like a warehouse for odd & ends. Some really interesting pieces, though! Worth a visit.
It's simply the best ceramics in the world! I've been leaving in Italy 8 years and I love ceramics very much and this very one is personally my favorite. In fact, all our visit to Vietri was made exactly to see and to buy directly from this very factory. I met a very kind approach of the stuff inside and saw, how some masters were working, - I couldn't expect better!! It was an experience, and we came back there 3 days, and all the time were exiting with something new. It's a laboratory and yes, the exposition is like in the laboratory, but I liked exactly this very feature, cause it's like as if you have your plates exactly from the hands of the masters, who create them.
There are plenty of products on several floors, but you are more likely to find simpler ceramics. The other shops in the city have a more varied (and I think nicer) range of products in better prices. We arrived with high hopes and left empty-handed. The staff are not helpful
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