Amalfi Coast

Sorrento's main square and the pedestrianised lanes running off it — Corso Italia's shops, the narrow Via San Cesareo lined with limoncello and leather stalls, and the cliffside terraces just past the square looking down onto the Marina Piccola docks below.

A small, quiet 14th-century cloister with intertwined stone arches and a garden of climbing bougainvillea, a few steps from the busiest part of town — genuinely easy to miss and worth the two minutes it takes to find. The adjoining Villa Comunale gardens have the best free clifftop view of the Bay of Naples and Vesuvius.

Not the beach club strip — the working fishing village a walk below the town centre, pastel houses and wooden boats pulled up on the slipway. Quieter than the marina piccola ferry docks, and the best spot in Sorrento for a slow sunset drink.

The best-preserved Roman city on earth, frozen by Vesuvius's eruption in 79AD — plaster casts of the victims, intact frescoes, and streets you can still walk down. Go with a guide if you want the context that turns rubble into a genuinely moving few hours; the Circumvesuviana train from Sorrento drops you at the gate.

Amalfi's striped, black-and-gold Moorish-Byzantine cathedral, up a dramatic flight of 62 steps from the main piazza — the crypt below is said to hold the relics of Saint Andrew. Ten minutes well spent, and the piazza below is the natural centre of the whole town.

A shaded gorge trail behind the town, following the stream that once powered Amalfi's medieval paper mills — waterfalls, ferns found almost nowhere else in Italy, and the ruined mills themselves half-swallowed by the forest. A genuinely cool break from the coast road in August.

A working 13th-century paper mill turned museum, with a hands-on demonstration of the original hand-pressing technique Amalfi exported across Europe for centuries. Small, specific and easy to combine with the Valle delle Ferriere walk just beyond it.

A fifteen-minute coastal walk from Amalfi's Duomo, Atrani is what Positano looked like before the crowds — a small sandy beach, a tangle of covered alleys, and a 10th-century church with a bronze medieval portal where Amalfi's doges were once crowned. Le Arcate, built into the rock wall above the beach, is the obvious lunch stop (see What to Eat).

Terraced gardens dropping toward the coast in tiers, the setting that reportedly inspired Wagner's Klingsor's garden in Parsifal, and now home to the Ravello Festival's open-air concerts each summer. The belvedere at the bottom is the single best framed sea view on the whole coast.

A working estate turned hotel and gardens, ending at the Terrace of Infinity — a stone balustrade lined with marble busts, seemingly floating 350 metres above the sea with nothing but sky and water beyond it. Come at golden hour and expect to wait a moment for a clear photo; it's worth it.

The last town on the coast road before Salerno, and the source of the hand-painted majolica tiles you'll have seen on every dome and terrace since Positano. Workshops line the main street with genuinely gift-worthy ceramics at a fraction of resort prices, and the small beach below is a good, uncrowded final stop.

A sea cave lit from below through the water into an electric blue glow, entered lying flat in a small rowing boat through an opening barely a metre high. Weather- and tide-dependent — it closes in rough seas — so build in a flexible morning and go as early as you can manage.

The three limestone stacks rising straight out of the sea that appear on every postcard of Capri, best seen from the water on a full loop of the island, which also passes the Grotta Verde and the Faro lighthouse. Combine with a swim stop at the Faraglioni themselves if the boat allows it.

A single-seat chairlift climbing to the highest point on Capri, with the Bay of Naples, Vesuvius and the whole island unfolding beneath your feet on the way up. Anacapri itself, the quieter of Capri's two towns, is worth an hour before or after.

Small, formal terraced gardens a short walk from Capri's main piazzetta, looking straight down the zigzagging Via Krupp path to the Faraglioni and the sea. Ten minutes, a handful of euros, and one of the best-value views on the island.

Every other Capri option in this guide assumes you're already based on the coast or in Sorrento — this one is built specifically for a Naples departure, and covers the whole island in a single day: the boat over, the Blue Grotto, a stop in Anacapri, and time in Capri town itself, all in one booking with no separate ferry tickets or connections to arrange. The obvious choice if Naples is your base, or if you're doing the Amalfi Coast without an overnight stop first.