Positano

Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that is not quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone. Its houses climb a hill so steep it would be a cliff except their stairs are cut in it… the small curving bay of unbelievably blue and green water lips gently on a beach of small pebbles!” (John Steinbeck, 1975).

A village clambering down a vertiginous slope to the sea, Positano hangs halfway between Sorrento and Amalfi on the most spectacular stretch of the coast. The village is a pleasant gathering of cafès and expensive women’s clothing stores, with a good but pebbly beach. The city center has no main square, but lots of great spots to enjoy the fantastic sea view. Positano, one of the gems of seaside tourism in the Mediterranean, with cluster houses in pastel hues standing out against the luxuriant vegetation. Its streets are crammed with boutiques which have made the “Positano style”, famous all over the World. Nonetheless you will still find here the charm of a simple fishing community, combined with justly renewed hotels. There are different beaches, including Spiaggia Grande, a place not just for swimming and sunbathing but to see and be seen. Fornillo is another delightful beach, taking its name from the bakers’ ovens in use here in Roman times. Just off the coast Li Galli islands are three little islands set in the light blue sea: Gallo lungo, Rotonda and Castelluccio, the home of the sirens who wooed Ulysses.

Extravagant, alluring, snobbish: this is Positano, the place where the Shash of Persia, Reza Pahlevi, chose to spend his honeymoon and where the film director Franco Zeffirelli lived for many years. Its narrow streets have hosted stars of Hollywood such as Anthony Queen, Liza Minnelli, Elizabeth Taylor and fashion gurus such as Jean Paul Gautier, Nicola Trussardi and others; famous names like Tennessee Williams, Edoardo De Filippo, Mick Jagger. Enjoy the wonderful jet set of the coastline for an afternoon of shopping amidst the picturesque alleys, and finish the day perhaps with a romantic dinner on the beach.