Telling the story of “Alta Marea” is something like going back to the past, to the history of Puolo and the people who developed it.
Puolo bay is the witness of a thousand years history, it faces the gulf of Naples and lays in the creek on the Neapolitan coast between Capo di Massa and Capo di Sorrento. Its name derives from the Roman Pollio Felice, a brilliant man of a noble family in Pozzuoli who also owned a beautiful villa whose ruins are still visible in the surroundings , in Calcarella.
In the last century we saw its rebirth and from the second world war onwards it became first a typical fishermen village an then a famous sunbathing location.
It is right in the early years of the last century that “Alta Marea”‘s story starts.
My grandmother Rosina inherited from my aunt Assunta a tavern where all the old people of Puolo used to meet to drink a good glass of wine and taste from time to time a piece of stockfish: there all the miners from the nearby cave next to the beach, found a place to relax.
Raffaele Simioli
In 1926 my father bought it and my mother was deeply involved in the business.
During those years, before the last world conflict, the most important products of the local area (Marina di Puolo) were: wine, fish, seafood and stones coming from the cave.
Then came the war, with misery and poorness, but the tavern was still there and in the years later it became a little restaurant, a place for people coming from Naples and surroundings just for holidays in summertime.
Raffaele, “Rafele”, as everybody called him, was the brain of the family and my mother Giuseppina together with all of us, sons and daughters, were the arms.
Little by little wellness started and in 1969 the tavern was destroyed to build a new elegant restaurant: “da Rafele” which started the business in the summer of 1970.
My mother was always in the kitchen but then as adults we could run the business by ourselves.
In the 60s and 70s, Marina di Puolo was transformed in a place for holidays, restaurants and easy car access.
My father, an open-minded and intelligent person, had always wanted to start and accommodation business, but for him it remained only a dream. With the help of my daughters and my wife I realized that dream and in 2006 I started “Alta Marea”, an accommodation structure which included the restaurant that we already owned.
“Alta Marea” is a small place but it’s warm and friendly and I’m happy to make my guests feel at ease, as they were at home. The atmosphere is what my father dreamed of: “take care of your guests” he said “especially when they come from different cultures and faraway countries”.
“Alta Marea” continues its story with its flavours, its aromas and the perfume of the sea that splashes against the rocks on the beach, the sun shines through the curtains in the rooms facing the sea, with old and new guests, local or occasional, that make this place more and more appreciated even because it’s also theirs…
Antonino Simioli