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Updated: June 27, 2025
From the point of view of history the chief interest of Positano centres in the time-honoured tradition that Flavio Gioja, the original inventor of the compass, was a native of this town, once a flourishing and important member of the group of cities which comprised the Amalfitan Republic in its palmy days.
Its original form was unaltered for nearly four centuries, when, in 1502, Flavio Gioja of Positano, near the town of Amalfi, on the coast of Calabria, a place celebrated for its maritime enterprise, improved upon the primitive rude and simple instrument by suspending the needle on a centre, and enclosing it in a box.
This aspect of things did not alter even when the projectile, then at the altitude of the 80th degree, was only separated from the moon by a distance of fifty miles, not even when, at 5 a.m., it passed at less than twenty-five miles from the mountain of Gioja, a distance which the telescopes reduced to half-a-mile. It seemed as if they could have touched the moon.
The compass, discovered according to tradition by Gioja of Naples in 1302, was employed by Columbus for the voyage to America in 1492. The telescope, known to the Arabians in the Middle Ages, and described by Roger Bacon in 1250, helped Copernicus to prove the revolution of the earth in 1530, and Galileo to substantiate his theory of the planetary system.
Day after day, however, went on, and I was never more gratified by the appearance of the same favourite signals. Yet I frequently saw my friend at his window; I waved my handkerchief, but in vain; he answered it no more. I was now informed by our jailers, that Gioja had been strictly prohibited from exciting my notice, or replying to it in any manner.
I was really vexed; and yet the resolute little efforts he made even then to reach me, gave me indescribable pleasure at the moment, so pleasing it is to find that one is really loved. This was a day full of great adventures for ME; a few steps further I passed the window of my old prison, now the abode of Gioja: "How are you, Melchiorre?" I exclaimed as I went by.
It was then I thought with pain of Melchiorre Gioja, on the rapid steps with which I had seen him pacing within those narrow walls, or sitting at his little table, recording his noble thoughts, or making signals to me; and his last look of sorrow, when forbidden longer to communicate with me.
He raised his head, and getting as near me as it was POSSIBLE, cried out, "How do you do, Silvio?" They would not let me stop a single moment; I passed through the great gate, ascended a flight of stairs, which brought us to a large, well-swept room, exactly over that occupied by Gioja. My bed was brought after me, and I was then left to myself by my conductors.
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