There is a road along the Campania coast that I have driven perhaps ten times. Like all great beauties, it has no mercy — plunging cliffs, hairpin turns, oncoming buses on roads built for donkeys, views so extravagant they feel like provocation. Yes, it’s the infamous Amalfi Coast. I love it completely. I do it off-season, of course. I even enjoy tight slope parking when I stop for aperitivo in Praiano. But you, you should take the bus, really. The SITA drivers (local bus company) are fearless and the timing is surprisingly good.
But here is the catch: the coast is not (entirely) the point. The coast is the way in. Most people go to the Amalfi Coast and come back with Positano. The happy few come back with Ravello.
Ravello isn’t technically on the coast at all. Leave Amalfi, take the road through the Valley of the Dragon — narrow, carved into the mountain, earning its name — and climb. You are upgraded to aristocratic height, 365 metres above the sea, where the air is different and the crowds are everyone else’s problem.
In 1880, Richard Wagner stood in the gardens of Villa Rufolo and said: “I have found the enchanted garden of Klingsor.” He stayed long enough to write the second act of Parsifal — an opera he had been labouring over for twenty years — and died three years later. Ravello has called itself the City of Music ever since. Every summer the Ravello Festival stages concerts on a platform jutting out over the Mediterranean, sky and sea as backdrop, the audience in silence. The programme always includes Wagner.
The treasure
The most extraordinary event is the Concerto all’alba — the dawn concert. The orchestra begins at 5:30 am on the Belvedere of Villa Rufolo. Music accompanies the transition from darkness to light, the sun rising over the Gulf of Salerno. This is not (only) a metaphor. This is an actual concert you can attend, for €100, on an August morning.
The intel
In April/ May it‘s glicine season. Heaven is real: Villa Cimbrone and its Infinity Terrace, the wisteria in full cascade along the Avenue of Immensity. No comment. Then sit in Piazza Duomo and do nothing over un cafe. That is Ravello entirely, and it is entirely enough.
The Ravello Festival runs July through early September. Check ravellofestival.com for the Concerto all’alba date — it sells out fast.
Combine with Amalfi — spend the day in the beautiful town below, then go to Ravello for the late afternoon and golden hour. When the last tourist bus has departed, the piazza becomes yours. The last bus back to Amalfi leaves around 6pm, which is precisely the wrong time to leave.
