There are some places in the world so agonizingly beautiful that it is challenging to commit that beauty into words, one of them is Italy’s Amalfi Coast.
Southeast of Naples in the Campagnia Region, the Amalfi Coast is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, known for its splendid drive; a tapestry of cliffside small towns; steeply vertical vineyards; and orange, lemon and olive groves perched at dizzying heights above the Mediterranean Sea. Amalfi Coast officially begins in Positano and runs almost to Salerno, the road snaking and twisting through the towns of Amalfi, Vietri Sul Mare, Maiori, Cetara, and Ravello.
Aside from its attractiveness — in common with its neighbor villages — and the fact that it is much less crowded than the tourist oases of Amalfi and Positano, Ravello has an indisputable seal. The place almost smells of glamour, as the rich and famous have been clustering here for years.
Composer Richard Wagner has a cobblestone street named for him, and a group of writers, most notably Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, cavorted here. Author Gore Vidal owned a house in Ravello (a stark white villa embracing a mountainside above the sea), and dancer Rudolf Nureyev owned an entire island just off the coast. In the 1930s, actress Greta Garbo had a tryst with conductor Leopold Stokowski in the secluded Villa Cimbrone, and years later, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, worried over her husband’s dalliance with Marilyn Monroe, carried up daughter Caroline and briefly fled to the seaside villa of her friend Gianni Agnelli, president of Fiat.
Ravello also is legendary for two of the Amalfi Coast’s most famous spots — the Villa Rufolo and the Villa Cimbrone. Dating from the 12th century, the Villa Rufolo merges a diversity of architectural styles, including a square Norman tower and an elaborate Moorish cloister. Its most famous features, however, are the exquisite gardens. A terrace garden looking out on the sea is the main site of the Ravello Festival, an annual event from June to September, combining opera, dance and orchestral music.
