Marina di Camerota (Marina re Cammarota for Cilento people), is the most populous municipality of Camerota, in the province of Salerno, is nestled in the National Park of Cilento and Vallo di Diano, then protected by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and biosphere reserve. The name is also traced back to the fact that the girl Kamaraton, that was beautiful as a goddess, had a stone heart. Legend has it that the helmsman of Enea, Palinuro, fell in love, going as far as to chase her image in the bottom of the sea, going to meet his destiny. Guilty of unrequited love, Kamaraton was transformed into a rock from Venus: the rock on which now stands Camerota, perennial witness to an unfortunate love.
In the seventeenth century, Marina Linfreschi was nothing more than a group of houses in Capo dell’Infreschi with oven, well, store and tavern, inhabited by farmers and fishermen employed on the fortifications along the coast.
On July 17, 1848, Ferdinando II de Bourbon signed a decree which states: “The row of houses along the coast of Camerota named Marina di Camerota”.
Starting from the border with Palinuro on the so-called Cala del Cefalo caves that are found up to the time of the discoveries were inhabited by shepherds with their families between them, it is worth mentioning the Grotta del Pesce, and the Grotta dell’Autaro and Caprara (the latter nowadays hosts a popular nightclub). On the northern edge of the village, there was a cave Calanca, which no longer exists because of a collapse. More important are the Grotta sepolcrale o del Poggio, the Grotta di Manfregiudice (pits and dangerous), the Grotta della Serratura (on the beach Lentiscelle, so called because of its shape), the Grotta della Cava o dell’uomo preistorico and the Riparo del poggio o Nicchia Gamba (which is the remains of what was once a cave collapsed in prehistoric times). Others can be found on the coast and can be reached only by sea: among these, it is worth mentioning the Grotta di Santa Maria, the Grotta di Porto Infreschi (accessible by sea, and within which there is a source of fresh water whose oxidation brightly colored rock), the beautiful beach of Cala Bianca and the Grotta delle noglie o delle noie for the so-called dual-input-shaped sausage in Naples (known precisely as “noglie”).
In 2013 Legambiente promotes the beach of Cala Bianca among the most beautiful in Italy.