By Burhan Abe
On Italy’s southern coast, where citrus groves meet sun-soaked cliffs and culinary traditions stretch back millennia, a story unfolds—not just of food, but of heritage, beauty, and belonging. This April, that story finds its most elegant expression in the form of a book: Campania: Recipes & Wanderings Across Italy’s Polychromatic Coast, a collaborative ode to place, taste, and time by Belmond and cult publisher Apartamento.
Launched during Milan Design Week 2025, this volume—the third in the “Recipes & Wanderings” series after Liguria and Penang—is a thoughtful exploration of Campania’s radiant culinary identity. But it is also something more: a collectible object of art, wrapped in bold visual narratives and personal essays, designed not only to inspire the palate but to speak to the soul.
A Work of Art Disguised as a Cookbook
Photography by Lea Colombo anchors the book with her signature kaleidoscopic lens. Known for her saturated colour work and emotive visual language, Colombo captures Campania not in postcard clichés, but in deeply expressive imagery—where ripe tomatoes bleed into crimson cloth, and lemon trees glow like stained glass.
This is Campania as few have seen it. Not simply Italy, but a dreamscape—drenched in pigment, personality, and a pulse that resonates through every dish and every village featured.
Timeless Recipes, Rooted in Story
At its heart, Campania is a culinary chronicle. The book includes 21 classic recipes, many drawn from the kitchen of Caruso, A Belmond Hotel in Ravello, a restored 11th-century palace perched high above the Amalfi Coast. There, Chef Armando Aristarco, a Naples native, crafts regional dishes with poetic precision—from spaghetti with lemon and capers to Caruso’s signature pizza, fired daily in a medieval stone oven beside the hotel’s famed infinity pool.
