In 1880 Wagner recognised in Villa Rufolo's garden the magic garden of Klingsor from his Parsifal: Ravello has been the city of music ever since, and each summer the festival sets its orchestra on a stage cantilevered over the void. At 350 metres above the sea, the village is an inhabited belvedere, quiet in the evening once the coaches descend.
Villa Cimbrone answers with the Terrace of Infinity and its row of busts against the blue. The cathedral keeps thirteenth-century mosaic pulpits; Gore Vidal, who lived here thirty years, called it the most beautiful place in the world. Hard to disagree.
Near Ravello
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
