Perched some 350 metres above the Tyrrhenian Sea on the clifftop gardens of Ravello, a nineteenth-century palazzo that once served as a private aristocratic retreat has become one of the Amalfi Coast's most quietly authoritative addresses. Belmond Caruso, which incorporates the Villa Margherita as part of its historic estate, was restored in 2009 with interiors overseen in the grand tradition of Italian palazzo hospitality — whitewashed walls, wide-plank oak floors, and hand-painted botanical ceiling frescoes that climb across corniced plasterwork in trailing vines and flowering branches. The 24 rooms and suites carry the atmosphere of a well-inherited house rather than a composed hotel, furnished with gilded Baroque mirrors, Louis XVI-style fauteuils upholstered in cut velvet, antique walnut chests, and aged cartographic prints hung with the studied nonchalance of things always having belonged there. Outside, ancient olive trees anchor terraced gardens thick with agapanthus, laurel, and cascading geraniums — the kind of planting that takes generations to achieve. The infinity pool, framed by stone arches draped in ivy and a pair of classical rendered columns, reflects the sky over the Lattari mountains in near-perfect symmetry at dusk. The open-air restaurant terrace, shaded by a striped canvas awning and set with round tables dressed in pale linen and striped bergère chairs, delivers what is perhaps the most dramatically positioned dining on the entire coast — the mountains falling sheer to the sea below, the horizon impossibly wide.

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