Positano

Positano is not just another town on the Italian coastline — it is an insane vertical fantasy that looks as if it were born from an Impressionist painter’s dream. It is built entirely on a near-vertical cliff that drops straight into the turquoise water of the Tyrrhenian Sea, with pastel cube houses — pink, yellow, peach and terracotta — stacked one on top of another like a child’s building blocks. There are no streets here in the ordinary sense; life in Positano is an endless maze of narrow stairs, steep alleys, balconies overflowing with bougainvillea and the intoxicating scent of giant lemons and citrus blossom filling the hot air. It is brazen, insanely expensive and demands an unreasonable effort from your knees, but when you stand on the cliff with a glass of cold white wine as the sun begins to set, it is hard to find a more dramatic, sexy place on earth. The only way to experience it is on foot, and it is going to hurt: you descend hundreds of winding steps past little shops of white linen clothes and local sandal-makers who craft custom leather sandals for you on the spot — only to realise that every step you went down toward the beach you will have to climb back up at the end of the day. And while all the day-trippers pack the famous main beach (Spiaggia Grande) like sardines, take the narrow, charming path that skirts the cliff westward, and within a ten-minute walk along the sea you reach Fornillo Beach — smaller, far quieter, ringed by high cliffs and full of a wilder, more authentic local vibe. And the easiest tip of all: don’t pay hundreds of euros for a private boat to see Positano from the sea (its most beautiful angle) — buy a simple ticket for the public ferry (traghetto) that links the coastal towns, and as you approach the jetty from below, with the whole town towering above you like a giant colourful wall, you get the most insane frame there is — for just a few euros.

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