A thousand feet above the coast, Ravello trades the beach for gardens, villas, and the most famous view in Italy, the calm, high counterpoint to everything below.
Why a day here
Two villa gardens are the reason. Villa Rufolo, whose terraces inspired Wagner and now stage a summer festival on a platform hung over the sea; and Villa Cimbrone, whose Terrace of Infinity, a balustrade of marble busts above a thousand-foot drop, is one of the great views on earth. Ravello is cooler, calmer, and more refined than the coast below.
Getting there
There’s no ferry. Ravello sits high above the water. Take the SITA bus up from Amalfi, about 25 minutes of hairpins up the Dragone valley, or a taxi. Many people pair it with Amalfi in one day: the coast in the morning, the heights in the afternoon.
Give it
A half day, more for a concert
A small, calm town of stone lanes and garden walls, built for the view rather than the sea. It has drawn artists and writers for over a century: Wagner, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Gore Vidal. And it still feels like a retreat. The main square, the Duomo, and the two villa gates are all a short walk apart.
The Terrace of Infinity at Villa Cimbrone; the gardens and tower of Villa Rufolo; and, in summer, a concert at the Ravello Festival, where the orchestra plays on a stage that seems to float over the gulf.
Wagner visited Villa Rufolo in 1880 and declared he’d found the magic garden of Klingsor for Parsifal; the festival born from that moment has run since 1953. Gore Vidal lived just below, at La Rondinaia, for some thirty years. Ravello has been the coast’s cultured hideaway since the Bloomsbury set, and it wears it lightly.
Ravello on the map