The best hotels on the Amalfi Coast
Few places can compare to the glorious southern edge of Italy’s Sorrentine Peninsula. The colourful towns and winding roads along the Amalfi Coast are the stuff of legend, glamourised by countless Hollywood films, and beloved by the rich and famous. To land a room with a view along these hallowed shores in July or August is one of the holy grails of summer holidays. Not that they should be deemed the only months worth a visit – most Amalfi Coast hotels are open from April until October, and in our opinion, June is the best time to visit. It should be said that a stay here doesn’t take place in a highrise or high-tech cement slab. Instead, the typical boltholes are age-old villas or palazzos in various stages of modernisation, steeped in traditional Italian charm and with breathtakingly timeless terrace views. For the very best hotels along the Amalfi Coast, these are the addresses to know about.
Which town is best to stay in along the Amalfi Coast?
The most beguiling stretch along the coast is Positano, a town described by Paul Klee as 'the only place in the world conceived on a vertical rather than a horizontal axis.' As such, the views here are legendary. So are the crowds – in summer, the serried ranks of sunbeds fill up quickly. If you're pockets are deep and you're here for the beauty and the buzz, look to lavish boltholes like Villa Treville and Il San Pietro di Positano. If Positano is the glamour-puss of the costiera, Ravello is its refined, aristocratic cousin. Most people visit to see its two magnificent garden estates – Villa Rufolo and Villa Cimbrone – as well its beautiful church, the refreshingly spare 11th-century Duomo di Ravello. In terms of sightseeing, the town of Amalfi has even more to explore – from the historic tunnel-like side alleys to the open-air salon of Piazza del Duomo – and is home to plenty of fantastic restaurants as well as the exceptional Hotel Santa Caterina.
hotelPalazzo Avino, Ravello
Featured in our Gold List of the best hotels in the world 2024
In any other setting, it would be impossible to miss the lashings of marble, vaulted hallways and antique busts, yet all eyes point in one direction: to the horizon. Palazzo Avino, first built as a private home in the 12th century, has a fairy-tale vista across the Monte Avvocata valley and the yacht-speckled Bay of Salerno. Known as the “pink palace of Ravello”, it is run by sisters Mariella and Attilia Avino, who have infused the place with buckets of personality and style – right down to the hand-painted tableware designed by Mariella and the Mar-a-viglia white wine from their vineyard, La Cascinetta, served at the glam Lobster & Martini Bar. The decor is Poseidon’s palace by way of Moda Operandi, with pink shell tiles, glossy sea-foam-blue bathrooms and chic scalloped headboards. Palazzo Avino doesn’t do straight lines: doorways are arched, ceilings domed, mirrors wavy, all mimicking the raggedly vertiginous coastline. Baroque terraces bursting with bubblegum-pink dipladenias lead down to the pool, where candy-striped parasols shade Dolce sliders and homemade Sorrento lemonade arrives in colourful Marino glassware. The hotel’s beach club, 20 minutes away, is a sprawling cliffside hang-out, in 2023 taken over by Valentino, complete with red loungers and retro changing booths. The main restaurant, Michelin-starred Rossellini’s, is one of the most spectacular dining rooms on the Amalfi Coast, where waistcoated waiters serve plates of lemon ravioli by candlelight, and all is well with the world. Charlotte Davey
Price: Rooms from around £1,083 per night.
Address: Palazzo Avino, via San Giovanni del Toro 28, Ravello
hotelBorgo Santandrea, Amalfi
Featured on our 2022 Hot List of the best new hotels in the world
If you wanted to land the most plum address on the Amalfi, this would be it — perched high in the cliffs, built into the rock face overlooking the sea, and within view of the sweet fishing village of Conca dei Marini. The property's original 1960s bones have been enhanced by a magical crew of local Amalfitano artisans, with details like landscaped gardens and museum-worthy vintage pieces making it one of the most exciting Italian arrivals in years. All rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows and sea views, but ask for an infinity-pool option if you don’t want to have to go to the private beach or communal pool to cool off. Ondine Cohane
Price: Rooms from around £654 per night.
Address: Via Giovanni Augustariccio, 33, 84011 Amalfi SA, Italy
hotelBelmond Caruso Ravello
The Belmond group took over this ivy-clad building that dates back to the 11th century and began a four-year period of renovation, bringing in art historians and archaeologists while updating its design. Almost all rooms have private terraces or gardens, and the original frescoes and vaulted ceilings add to the feeling of absolute splendour. The additional standalone guesthouse Villa Margherita has a private terrace overlooking the sea – breakfast in bed takes on a whole new meaning. Dining here is all lobster, vongole, fresh fish, and all manner of breads and breadsticks and snacky deliciousness. Plus the Bubbles Bar for Champagne. All in all, this is the kind of bolthole you book in to for the astonishing views, and the pool and the secluded little nooks dotted all around – so you can creep away to write that novel. Martha Ward
Price: Rooms from around £1,452 per night.
Address: Belmond Hotel Caruso, Piazza San Giovanni del Toro 2, 84010 Ravello
hotelCasa Privata, Praiano
A sanctuary among a squash of houses in low-key Praiano south of flashy Positano, this former fisherman’s home has seven bedrooms and beautiful grounds carved into the hillside. The garden suite is the most secluded room, set away from the main house with its own terrace hidden behind balls of box hedge. Keep heading down and you reach the rocks, where bright white sun loungers are tucked away on hidden platforms and a long set of pool steps leads all the way to the sea for swimming. Breakfast is a simple but splendid spread of lemon cake and almond tarts.
Address: Casa Privata, via Rezzola 41, Praiano
hotelHotel Santa Caterina, Amalfi
This hotel is among the top contenders for best location along the entire Amalfi Coast. It's a 10-minute stroll from Amalfi itself, there’s not a coach tour in sight and the bedroom balconies overlook the famous town. It’s also one of the few hotels that has direct access to the sea – from a terrace that juts out of the rocky hillside. To get there, two glass-fronted lifts whisk guests down the cliff past the mesmerising gardens and lemon groves. Bedrooms are quite basic but smart, with colourful tiles, linen-covered chairs and mellow yellow sun loungers on the bougainvillaea-wrapped balconies.
Price: Rooms from around £431 per night.
Address: Hotel Santa Caterina, via Mauro Comite 9, Amalfi
Jack JohnshotelLe Sirenuse, Positano
John Steinbeck stayed here in 1953 when it was the Marchesi Sersale's summer villa. Now more sophisticated, it is exquisitely managed by Swiss-trained Antonio Sersale and his wife Carla, and filled with the family's gorgeous antiques and pictures. The 58 bedrooms have handmade Vietri-tiled floors and vaulted ceilings, and the pool terrace has the best bay views; the Champagne & Oyster Bar is a prime aperitivo spot, and the romantic La Sponda restaurant serves dishes including scallops with artichokes. There is also a spa and a vintage Riva speedboat.
Price: Rooms from around £831 per night.
Address: Le Sirenuse, Via Cristoforo Colombo 30
Richard PowershotelBelmond Villa Margherita, Ravello
A standalone house set beyond the citrus groves at Belmond Hotel Caruso on a spectacularly prime patch of hillside. For complete privacy, the approach to the villa is down a cobbled, no-through street to the left of the main entrance to the hotel. It can either be rented whole or split into two suites, which are complementary but furnished in distinct styles. Both suites have huge windows that frame cascading plantations of Amalfi lemons clinging to steep, rough terraces of limestone, pastel-coloured villages along the coast and the great azure sweep of the Mediterranean.
Price: Rooms from around £3,403 per night.
Address: Belmond Villa Margherita, Via Santa Margherita, 7, 84010 Ravello SA, Italy
hotelIl San Pietro di Positano, Positano
This is the most indulgent hotel on the Amalfi Coast, a multi-storey tumble of rooms built into a cliff by Carlo Cinque (great-uncle of the present owners) in the late 1960s. The rooms are huge (and most have full-on views of Positano), the terraced gardens spectacular, and there's a Michelin-starred restaurant that makes the most of local seafood and produce from the hotel's kitchen garden, with dishes such as prawn carpaccio with herbs. A lift whisks you down through the rock face to the private beach, a tennis court and the relaxed, lunch-only Carlino restaurant. Back up top, the famous terrace is one of the places for a sunset aperitivo.
Price: Rooms from around £625 per night.
Address: Il San Pietro di Positano, Via Laurito 2
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Jack JohnshotelVilla Treville, Positano
What singles out Treville is its immense beauty and seclusion, despite Positano being only a couple of hairpin bends away. Book the white, cream and blue Diaghilev suite, which has double doors that open onto a small balcony with the bay of Positano at your feet. And although the price is hardly chump change, it includes all drinks, which means cocktails any time you want them in wafer-thin Murano glasses. Wander into the kitchen, and the chef will whip you up whatever you fancy whenever you fancy it, using fresh produce from Treville’s gardens.
Price: Rooms from around £688 per night.
Address: Villa Treville, Via Arienzo, 30, 84017 Positano SA, Italy
hotelCasa Angelina, Praiano
This dazzling-white, 1970s cubic structure is in a fabulous location in Praiano, with views up the coast to Capri from all over the hotel – especially from the pool, bar and excellent rooftop restaurant, Un Piano nel Cielo. The all-white public rooms are warmed up with hardwood floors and wacky Murano glass sculptures; the bedrooms are scented with home made fragrances made with local citrus fruits and sandalwood. For proper privacy, book one of the four Eaudesea Experience rooms which are in renovated fishermen's cottages just above La Gavitella Beach, 250 steps down from the hotel.
Price: Rooms from around £635 per night.
Address: Casa Angelina, Via Capriglione 147, Praiano
hotelVilla Cimbrone, Ravello
The villa that overlooks Ravello's other famous garden was built by Baron Grimthorpe, of Big Ben fame, at the beginning of the 20th century. Many of the rooms (all recently refurbished) are museum pieces in their own right, with frescoed ceilings and antique furniture; and the library, with its huge stone fireplace, enters right into the country-house spirit of the place. Given the lack of car access, it's not for everyone, but if you are travelling light and are with that special person, there are few more romantic hideaways on the Costiera.
Price: Rooms from around £636 per night.
Address: Villa Cimbrone, Via Santa Chiara 26, Ravello
hotelHotel Palazzo Murat, Positano
This elegant 18th-century mansion in the centre of town, with a shady garden and dreamy courtyard, was once the summer residence of Gioacchino Murat, King of Naples. For space and atmosphere, go for one of the Deluxe rooms in the original palazzo with its Bourbon-era antiques and romantic four-posters. The other bedrooms are smaller and plainer, with white walls, tiled floors and private terraces or balconies. The highly regarded Al Palazzo restaurant creates modern takes on local specialities, such as herbed rack of lamb with a mille-feuille of sweet-and-sour aubergine.
Price: Rooms from around £451 per night.
Address: Hotel Palazzo Murat, Via dei Mulini 23
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Jack JohnshotelGrand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria
Sorrento is on the other side of the Lattari Mountains, facing Naples and Vesuvius, the ideal place to stop at on the way to or from the Amalfi Coast. The town has a belle époque atmosphere, with a string of fin-de-siècle hotels. The best is the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, with terraces looking out onto Vesuvius, spacious rooms of old-fashioned elegance and sprawling gardens with a sumptuous pool and world-class spa. Built in 1834 and still owned by the Neapolitan Fiorentino family, the hotel has hosted everyone from Caruso and Pavarotti to Marilyn Monroe. Its Michelin-starred restaurant, Terrazza Bosquet, is a true expression of the whole place: sophisticated and indulgent.
Price: Rooms from around £459 per night.
Address: Piazza Torquato Tasso, 34, 80067 Sorrento NA, Italy
Jack JohnshotelMonastero Santa Rosa, Amalfi
This glamorous, 17th-century former monastery dominates the shoreline about a kilometre from Amalfi. Drawing in high-fliers from all around (Prince Albert II of Monaco and Princess Charlene were checking in as we arrived), it has knockout terraced grounds and a swimming pool that seems to hover between sea and sky. After more than 10 years of restoration work, the Monastero has emerged with beautiful, very soft, lovely-to-walk-on Jerusalem-marble floors and 20 cool, if austere, bedrooms. Some have terraces, but all are furnished with a mix of custom-made pieces and 19th-century antiques collected by the American owner. There are lots of quiet spots in the gardens, but it's the spa that will be the real pull. Perhaps it's a bit grandiose for this area, but it's undeniably fabulous, with natural light, stained glass, an ice cave and gorgeous Santa Maria Novella products. At Michelin-starred Ristorante Il Refettorio, the chef turns out delectable dishes such as house-made tagliolini with ‘Pollino’ summer truffle and sweet shrimp.
Price: Rooms from around £614 per night.
Address: Via Roma, 2, 84010 Conca dei Marini SA, Italy