Il San Pietro di Positano was built into the cliff by Carlino Cinque in 1970. The 17th-century chapel at its entrance gave the hotel its name. The Cinque family still runs it — Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, and Mick Jagger have all stayed.

The hotel is nearly invisible from the road. Cinque built it downward into the rock, so its rooms step down the cliff face on a promontory his family had owned for generations. Guests reach the private beach ninety meters below by an elevator cut through the stone. When it opened, critics said a hotel outside the town center would never succeed. A half-century later, it is considered one of the most beautiful hotels in the world.

The Sfusato Amalfitano — Positano’s prized thin-skinned lemon — gives more than limoncello. Look for granita al limone at midday, pollo al limone on dinner menus. At aperitivo, a Negroni Sbagliato (Campari, sweet vermouth, prosecco) or a chilled Greco di Tufo. For anyone with a sweet tooth: bab’a al limoncello, the rum-soaked sponge cake served with its own lemon syrup.

The wildest and most remote of the Pontine Islands. Volcanic, uninhabited except for a few summer houses, and once called “one of the most beautiful islands in the world” by National Geographic. The Romans used Palmarola as a place of exile; today it’s more likely you’ll have the anchorage to yourselves.

Geologically, Palmarola is the remains of a volcano that went dormant a million years ago. Its cliffs rise in cathedral-like columns — the tallest is known as the Cattedrale — and the seabed below is scattered with Roman anchors from wrecked grain ships once making their way to the imperial warehouses at Puteoli.

The Pontines produce Biancolella and Forastera — crisp, mineral whites shaped by volcanic soil and sea breeze. The local catch is pesce azzurro (bluefish, mackerel, anchovies) grilled simply, dressed with lemon and island olive oil. Fave e cicoria — mashed broad beans with wild chicory — is a Pontine staple.

The largest of the Pontines, Ponza has served as a place of exile since Roman times — Nero banished his first wife Octavia here in AD 62. The dramatic pink-streaked cliffs of Chiaia di Luna beach and the Grotte di Pilato (Pilate’s Caves) — Roman fish farms carved into the rock two thousand years ago — are the island’s defining sights.

The town’s arched seaside promenade and the pastel cluster of houses around the port date to a Bourbon rebuilding in the 1770s; before that, most of the island lay abandoned. At Cala Feola, natural saltwater pools reachable only by tender or on foot hold their warmth through summer better than the sea that surrounds them.

Ponza’s Biancolella is the definitive wine: vines have grown on these terraces since Roman hands planted them. On land, look for zuppa di lenticchie, pesce al limone, and the island’s ricotta di pecora. Meals commonly close with a grappa or a small glass of limoncello, chilled to just above freezing.

Tiny, ancient, and quietly consequential. Ventotene’s Porto Romano — the Roman harbor hand-cut from volcanic tuff in the 1st century BC — is still in use today. Augustus banished his own daughter Julia to this island in 2 BC for sexual scandal; she spent five years here before being moved to the mainland.

The neighboring islet of Santo Stefano, visible from the harbor, was built into a Bourbon panopticon prison in 1797 and held Sandro Pertini — later president of Italy — for years before the war.

In 1941, anti-fascists Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi, imprisoned on Ventotene, drafted the Ventotene Manifesto — one of the founding documents of the idea of a united Europe. It is still read aloud in Strasbourg when the European Parliament seats new members.

The island’s lenticchie di Ventotene — small, firm, earthy — are a Slow Food Presidium, grown in volcanic soil since Roman times. The kitchen pairs them with fish just off the boat. Wine: local Biancolella, or a glass of Falanghina from the mainland. A passito or Moscato closes the evening.

The Emperor Tiberius ruled Rome from Capri for the last decade of his life (AD 27–37); his Villa Jovis still crowns the eastern cliff. The island has drawn artists and writers ever since — Axel Munthe, Graham Greene, Jackie Onassis. Da Paolino opened in 1977 as a family trattoria under a canopy of lemon trees. The same trees still hang over the tables tonight.

The Faraglioni — the three sea stacks that anchor Capri’s silhouette — are named Stella (attached to the island), Faraglione di Mezzo (pierced by a tunnel tall enough for a tender to pass through), and Scopolo (the farthest, home to a blue-throated lizard found nowhere else on earth). Da Paolino’s signature dish is hand-rolled lemon-ricotta ravioli; a welcome limoncello arrives at every table. Photographing other parties is quietly frowned upon — the clientele tends to prefer it that way.

Capri’s table: insalata caprese (invented here — tomato, mozzarella, basil), ravioli capresi (cheese-stuffed pasta, which you’ll meet at Da Paolino), and torta caprese, the island’s famous flourless chocolate-almond cake. For drinks: Capri DOC wines, the crisp Falanghina, or a limoncello made from i limoni di Capri.

The Sersale family opened Le Sirenuse as a hotel in 1951, turning their summer home into Positano’s first proper resort. Jacqueline Kennedy, Dustin Hoffman, and Franco Zeffirelli were among its early guests. Le Sirenuse di Mare — their seaside outpost at Nerano — opened in summer 2025. You’ll be among the first to dine there.

The hotel takes its name from the sirens who, in Greek myth, lured sailors onto the rocks at the tip of the Sorrento peninsula. Odysseus had himself lashed to the mast to hear their song and live; lesser captains didn’t. The sirens were said to live on Li Galli, the three islets visible on clear days from the hotel’s terrace — Rudolf Nureyev bought them in 1988 and died there in 1993. The Sersales still run the hotel, four generations on; Carla Sersale designs the ceramics and linens and the house fragrance, Eau d’Italie, bottled in a laboratory upstairs.

At Nerano, the dish is spaghetti alla Nerano — pasta tossed with zucchini, aged provolone, and basil, invented here in the 1950s at the Maria Grazia restaurant. Back aboard off Positano, the chef’s final dinner may feature linguine al cartoccio (seafood baked in parchment) with a bottle of Greco di Tufo. At Le Sirenuse’s terrace afterwards: Franco’s Gin Sour, the bar’s signature.

From the Italian “a rivederci” — “until we see each other again.” The word carries the assumption of return. Italians rarely say a hard goodbye.

They prefer “a presto” (until soon), “ci vediamo” (we’ll see each other), or “a dopo” (until later). All carry the same quiet optimism: this isn’t over. Ciao — the word that circled the world — derives from the Venetian “s’ciavo,” I am your servant. Even a casual Italian hello is a small promise.

Before catching transport, a last Neapolitan taste: pizza margherita (invented in Naples in 1889), sfogliatella (the shell-shaped ricotta pastry), and mozzarella di bufala campana from the region’s water buffalo herds. The regional wine is Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio, grown on Vesuvius’ slopes — said in local legend to be Christ’s tears when he wept over the fall of Satan.