Belmond Hotel Caruso
Ravello, Italy
An 11th-century palazzo suspended over the Amalfi Coast.
Ravello sits high above the tourist crush of the Amalfi Coast, and the Caruso sits highest of all. It's an 11th-century palazzo whose frescoed ceilings and marble columns were painstakingly recovered over a restoration that took the better part of a decade.
The infinity pool, cantilevered over a thousand feet of sheer drop, has become one of the defining images of Italian summer. It deserves the fame. Few man-made spaces frame the natural world so perfectly.
The Verdict
This is the coast at its most rarefied, above the day-trippers, above the traffic, above almost everything. Come for a honeymoon, or come to propose. Either way you'll leave changed.
Swimming to the edge of the infinity pool as it seems to pour straight off the cliff into the blue of the coastline below.
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