High Drama

Italy’s Amalfi Coast is storybook Europe. Here, historic hotels crawl down cliffs and meet cute with romantic coves and secret grottos in the sea below. It’s pure theater. Play a part.

When you talk about the Amalfi Coast and its closest neighbors, you’re in benchmark territory — in the world of picturesque, cliff-hugging village jewels, this stretch of Italian waterfront is legendary, and for good reason. The hospitality dials itself up accordingly: classically proportioned villas and palatial summer retreats stake their stunning claims in lush tiers, peacocking in that good-natured Italian way with an infinity pool here, a candlelit terrace there, and everywhere the Tyrrhenian waters’ painterly backdrop.

Iconic travel destinations acquire their reputations by offering visitors the chance to live life more dramatically than usual. The hotels and resorts of the Amalfi Coast in particular play their part, putting on one hell of a performance: suspenseful, riveting, rousing. This is storybook Europe in full stereo. Check out all the hotels we recommend in and around the Amalfi coast, and see fifteen of our favorites below.
 

Il San Pietro di Positano

Positano, Italy

A small 17th-century chapel devoted to San Pietro marks the entrance of hotel Il San Pietro di Positano, and the rest of the property hangs on the cliffside below, each level descending the face like a staircase — offering unparalleled views of the sea from every room and every terrace. The hotel is built just one room deep; each room hugs the cliff at its back side and opens onto a private terrace at the front.

Hotel Poseidon

Positano, Italy

Originally constructed as a private villa, the Hotel Poseidon opened its doors to the public in 1955, and is still going strong as a member of Positano’s small-but-elite fraternity of classic luxury hotels. It’s set halfway up Positano’s curving slope, on the sunrise-facing side, giving it a spectacular view of the town and the sea, as well as easy enough access to the beach.

Hotel Villa Cimbrone

Ravello, Italy

The clifftop village of Ravello, as the old saying goes, is closer to heaven than the sea. And while the views over the Amalfi Coast are fantastic from anywhere in town, they’re especially astonishing from the 11th-century Hotel Villa Cimbrone. Its famous Terrazza dell’Infinito, or Terrace of Infinity, overlooks the Bay of Sorrento, as do many of the luxury hotel’s rooms and suites.

Le Sirenuse

Positano, Italy

Le Sirenuse is remarkably un-hotel-like. For two hundred and fifty years it was the summer house of the noble Neapolitan family Marchese Sersale. Inside, it is simple and lovely, with an authenticity so unpretentious it is almost careless. The floors are glazed tile, the windows are delicately scalloped, and the pale-hued bedrooms have plain white beds and antiques that have been lovingly compiled since the family first moved here.

Hotel Santa Caterina

Amalfi, Italy

Santa Caterina is the real deal: the grounds are all terraces, olive groves and lemon orchards, with the kind of jaw-dropping views that make the Amalfi one of the world’s most special places. The look of the building, and of the interiors, is charmingly old-fashioned; there’s no attempted design-boutique guff here, and it comes off timeless rather than dated.

Monastero Santa Rosa

Conca dei Marini, Italy

A renovated 17th-century monastery is the stuff glamorously reclusive holidays are made of — especially in a destination as popular as the Amalfi Coast. The atmosphere of seclusion is supplied by the building and the site, while the Italian-style dolce vita is a result of the fact that the present-day Monastero Santa Rosa Hotel & Spa is focused not on renouncing pleasure, but embracing it.

Hotel Miramalfi

Amalfi, Italy

It’s an age-old question whether it’s preferable to stay on the beach or on the hill overlooking it. Francesco Mansi chose the latter when he selected Hotel Miramalfi’s clifftside location in the 1950s; instead of opening his hotel in the pretty seaside village, he opted for a property with postcard-like vistas of Amalfi and the Tyrrhenian Sea. The hotel’s design makes the most of its position.

Anantara Convento di Amalfi Grand Hotel

Amalfi, Italy

This remarkable old convent, with its extraordinary views and Arab-influenced architecture, is now open to the traveling public as Anantara Convento di Amalfi. A bit of whitewashing in the interiors just serves to underscore the rooms’ ancient lines, and helps make the most of the plentiful sunshine. Meanwhile some judicious modern interventions make the rooms and suites as comfortable as they are visually striking.

Villa Treville

Positano, Italy

Villa Treville isn’t a hotel so much as Positano’s most storied stage set. Once Franco Zeffirelli’s summer residence, it still bears the director’s touch: art, curios, even fragments of opera sets, layered across four villas that tumble down to the sea. The gardens are threaded with secret terraces, pools, and pathways, the kind of spaces where Maria Callas or Leonard Bernstein once escaped the crowds below.

Hotel Le Agavi

Positano, Italy

Hotel Le Agavi, like much else in this vertiginous Amalfi Coast town, clings to the cliffside above the bay, its outdoor spaces occupying a cascade of terraces at a dizzying multitude of levels. Every room in the house has a killer view from a furnished balcony, is crisply decorated in blues and whites, and is outfitted with luxury-hotel details, both high-tech and low.

Palazzo Pascal

Scala, Italy

The tiny hilltop hamlet of Minuta looks out over the same Tyrrhenian Sea, from similarly lofty mountainside perches, as Positano or Amalfi. It’s here that the Palazzo Pascal has stood since the 11th century, first as an aristocratic residence and now as a luxurious but low-key and thoroughly tranquil seven-suite boutique hotel, owned and operated by a creative family with exquisite taste in curation and collection.

Borgo Santandrea

Amalfi, Italy

It takes a fine hotel to stand out amid the legends of the Amalfi Coast, but the ultra-chic, ultra-luxe Borgo Santandrea seems up to the task. It’s a Sixties modernist structure, thoroughly renovated under the direction of architect Rino Gambardella, and it’s full of classic mid-century furniture from the owner’s private collection, all reupholstered in Italian-made fabrics. Virtually everything else is new, but all feels perfectly at home.

Hotel Villa Franca Positano

Positano, Italy

Hotel Villa Franca was a private home until the family turned it into a boutique hotel that combines guesthouse coziness with stylish designer furniture — and extras like its rooftop pool, its expansive spa, and its two fine restaurants push it over the top into luxury-hotel territory. Like every other building in the heart of old Positano, the villa is built right into the steep cliffside.

Caruso, A Belmond Hotel

Ravello, Italy

The Caruso has long been one of the Amalfi’s highlights. High on a cliffside in Ravello, the view of the coast from its terrace has been described as the most beautiful in the world by no less an authority than Gore Vidal. Rooms wind and wend through the building, each different, all sumptuously furnished and most with views that range from rather good to jaw-dropping. It’s been renovated, yes, but hardly modernized.

Casa Angelina

Praiano, Italy

Praiano isn’t the most famous town on the Amalfi Coast, but its appeal is undeniable: it has astonishing views of Positano itself, along with the dramatic seascapes to the west. It also has Casa Angelina, a rare hotel that makes a virtue of modern architecture and design even in these most traditional environs — and, in the process, establishes a tone of understated luxury that few hotels anywhere can match.