The Coast Issue

The Amalfi Coast is one narrow road along the top of a cliff, and in June it begins to fill. Almost everything about the trip is decided by where on that road you sleep — whether the coast becomes the dream in the brochures or a traffic jam with a very good view. So this issue is a plain argument about three towns.

Positano is the vertical one, a cascade of pastel houses tumbling down to a small beach: glamorous, steep, photographed to death, and hard work on the knees. Ravello sits high above the coast in cooler air, quieter and more cultivated, with the garden terraces of Villa Rufolo and Villa Cimbrone and a summer music festival that plays on a stage built out over the drop. Amalfi town, down at sea level, is the workaday one, with a startling striped cathedral and the ferries coming and going below it.

Whichever you choose, our one firm instruction is to arrive and move by water. The coast road is slow, hot and nerve-jangling in summer and the buses crawl; the ferries between the towns are faster, cooler, and turn the getting-around into the best part of the day. Base within reach of a jetty and you may never need a car at all.

And leave the middle of the day to lunch. This is a coast of lemons the size of fists, of seafood and long shaded tables by the water — a place that rewards sitting still at noon far more than chasing between towns in the heat.

Vivienne Hartwell, Editor-in-Chief