The terraces above Amalfi are held up by dry-stone walls built without mortar — a technique known locally as macere, and one that has shaped this coast for close to a thousand years. The walls hold thin soil on gradients too steep for machinery, and every basket of tomatoes or lemons still has to be carried down by hand or by cable line. Amalfi was a maritime republic while Venice was still rising, trading with Byzantium and North Africa through a harbour that is now a beach. The town lost its fleet and kept its agriculture. That is the reason so many Amalfi pizza cooking class tours begin in a garden rather than a kitchen. Pizza arrived from Naples, roughly 60 kilometres north along the Tyrrhenian, where the craft of the pizzaiuolo was formalised through the nineteenth century and entered UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2017. The coast adapted it to what it had. Wood-fired ovens were built into farmhouse courtyards and fed with olive and chestnut prunings. Fiordilatte, cow's-milk mozzarella stretched by hand in near-boiling water, became the standard here rather than buffalo mozzarella from the Sele plain inland. Dough rises slowly in the warmth of the yard. The outcome is a coastal dialect of a Neapolitan language: same grammar, different vocabulary. The produce carries the difference. The sfusato amalfitano, a long tapered lemon with a thick perfumed rind, grows under pergolas of chestnut poles that must be rebuilt after winter storms. Tomatoes ripen on terraces between 200 and 400 metres, close enough to the water that salt reaches the leaves. Basil, oregano and rocket are cut minutes before they are used. Farmhouse kitchens on the Amalfi Coast pizza and mozzarella circuit work almost entirely within that radius, which is less a philosophy than a consequence of geography — nothing arrives here quickly. Why it matters now is economic as much as culinary. Smallholdings of half a hectare cannot survive on lemon sales alone, and abandoned terraces collapse within a decade, taking the hillside with them. The format locals call a corso di cucina has kept plots planted and walls repaired. The farms themselves carry no entrance fee — 0 EUR — with the sessions sold separately as booked experiences, and gates in Amalfi, Italy open 09:00–18:00 every day of the week. Travellers holding Amalfi pizza cooking class tickets are buying something older than a lesson: a few hours inside a working landscape where dough, fire, garden and sea are arranged in the order this coast has always used them.