The Seductive Power of Ravello

Italy will always surprise you with yet another achingly beautiful town that casts a spell over you and has you dreaming of la vita bella.

The dreamy town of Ravello sits 365 metres above sea level and six kilometres via a winding road from Amalfi. Like both Amalfi and Positano, Ravello used to be much larger and richer.

The real history

It began with a tragedy at sea. The town of Scala, across the valley from Ravello, was settled in the 4th century A.D. by Romans who were shipwrecked on their way to Constantinople. Among them were members of the Rufus family, Roman nobility whose descendants played a prominent role in the development of both Scala and Ravello.

Little more is known of this tiny Roman colony until it was formally absorbed into the Amalfi Republic in 1070. In the 12th century, its residents rebelled against Amalfi, appointed their own Doge, or Ruler, and acquired the name of “Rebellum” in recognition of its renegrade state.

In medieval times, Ravello produce several successful merchants who built the famous Villa Rufulo, the palazzi, the Duomo and the churches of Santa Maria a Gradillo and San Giovanni al Toro. Their architectural contributions transformed Ravello from a sleepy mountain hamlet into a medieval wonder. By the 13th century, Ravello was widely admired for its gardens, architecture and breathtaking vistas.

Difficult to imagine that prior to a plague that swept the region in 1656, Ravello had around 40,000 locals. Today, 2,500 people live in Ravello. Scala, Ravello’s closest neighbour, reportedly had more than 100 towers and major fortifications before Pisan forces destroyed much of the town in the 12th century.

A magnet for brilliant, creative and famous people

In 1880 Richard Wagner drew inspiration for his opera Parsifal from the romantic garden of Villa Rufolo. D.H. Lawrence spent time in Ravello whilst writing his masterpiece, “Lady Chatterley’s lover”. In 1938 Greta Garbo had her long love affair with the conductor Leopold Stokowski. Humphrey Bogart, Paul Newman, Peter O’Toole, Robert de Niro and many other movie stars stayed and worked in Ravello.

Today, Ravello is the embodiment of the romantic wedding with several thriving Wedding Planner businesses and lots of brides posing in all the gorgeous corners of the gardens of Ravello.

La citta della musica

The Ravello Festival, an arts and music festival, has brought such acclaim that Ravello is now known as “the city of music”. What began in 1953 as a music festival to honour the German composer Richard Wagner sixty years after his death, has transformed over the years into an arts festival that attracts many international artists. Each season it brings music, opera, theatre and dance performances to a specially constructed stage in Villa Rufolo. The outdoor setting in the gardens is beyond beautiful as everyone sits in tiered seating facing the sea with the lights twinkling in the dark all the way along the coastline. For classical music lovers, the Ravello Concert Society hosts concerts throughout much of the year in historic locations around Ravello.

Places I love to visit time after time

• Piazza Duomo is in the heart of town, surrounded by cafes and restaurants. It is the perfect place to sip on an Aperol spritz when most of the daytrippers from Amalfi and Positano have returned to the seaside, or to capture the first morning light when no-one is around and the first bells are tolling.

• Leading off the piazza is the entrance to Villa Rufolo, once the sprawling home of the Rufolo family dating back to the 13th century. In the 19th century, Scottish industrialist, Francis Nevile Reid, bought the villa and spent his life restoring it and reviving its splendid gardens. He died in Ravello in 1892 at the age of 66. There is a museum built into the soaring Torre Maggiore watchtower. As you climb the tower, videos, photos and artefects tell the story of the Rufolo family and Reid’s transformation of the villa. At the top there is a stunning viewing platform with a 360 degree panorama of Ravello and the villa’s gardens.

• A delightful stroll through Ravello brings you to the tip of the promontory which is home to Villa Cimbrone. Once it was an enormous estate of luxuriant vegetation which produced timber for naval use. By the end of the 19th century, by then sadly abandoned, the estate was discovered by British banker and politician, Ernest William Beckett, 2nd Baron Grimthorpe. He came to Ravello to recover from depression which he had suffered from since the early death of his wife. The magic of Ravello brought happiness back into his life and he bought the estate in 1904, determined to create “the finest place in the world”.

  A large wooden door opens to the gardens with a view down the aptly named Avenue of Immensity. This long walkway is covered with a wisteria draped pergola that is heavenly in spring. Pathways lead off to hidden parts of the garden where you will find fountains, nymphs, temples, pavilions and statues.

  Keep going to the end of the Avenue of Immensity to find incredible views of the Amalfi Coast. Lined with marble statues, the Terrace of Infinity is a place for dreaming.

• Ravello also has a reputation for beautiful ceramics and is home to two factories. Ceramiche d’Arte by Pascal is owned by designer and artist, Pasquale Sorrentino who has carried on the tradition for more than forty years. All of the handmade pieces are painted by a team of seventy artisans and can be shipped anywhere in the world. Ceramiche Cosmolena is an enormous showroom that began over sixty years ago with Cosmo and Maddalena. Their love for beauty and ceramics is carried on now by their children and grandchildren.

• For over ten years I have been taking groups to Cumpo Cosimo, an authentic, noisy trattoria where we simply cannot resist the cannelloni. It is SO GOOD. Throughout its 300 years in operation, this trattoria has been in the same family for the last 75 years. Netta, the matriarch of the family, is one of the smartest businesswomen I know. In her eighties by now, I’m sure, she never misses a trick as she works the floor dressed in her apron with her bun securely tucked inside a red crocheted net (can’t think what else to call it). She knows exactly what everyone at the table has eaten, who has drunk too much and within seconds has worked out the entire bill for ten people in her head. She also owns the butcher shop next door.

Ci vediamo la prossima settimana.

Deb