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The Verdict —
Caruso, A Belmond Hotel, Amalfi Coast
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The pool at the hour everyone photographs it and almost nobody gets in.
The Location
I was on a solo research trip from Naples down the coast and on to Puglia, and the drive up to Ravello is the part I keep thinking about. You come along the coast road to Amalfi, turn inland, and then just keep climbing – switchback after switchback through lemon terraces until the sea is a long way below you and the noise of the coast has gone completely.
The hotel sits at about 350 metres, and that elevation does something I have not experienced anywhere else on this coast: it makes its own weather. I sat by the pool in full sun and watched a storm move along the water underneath me. Ravello’s main square is a five-minute walk from the door, which means you can have dinner in town and walk home, and the town empties out in the evening once the day-trippers have gone back down.
What it is not is a beach hotel. The nearest sand is a thirty-minute shuttle away, and you feel every one of those 350 metres on the way back up.
The Vibe
Grand & Historic, Old World Romance
The Story
The building is the Palazzo d’Afflitto and it goes back to the eleventh century. It became a hotel more than a hundred years ago, when a vineyard owner called Pantaleone Caruso took it on and started putting up the writers and composers who were already coming to Ravello for the view – Wagner among them, which is why his name is still on a cocktail at the bar.
Belmond took the property on about twenty-five years ago and gave the restoration to Federico Forquet, the Italian couturier turned interior and garden designer. What he did was mostly uncovering rather than adding: the vaulted ceilings, the columns and a set of eighteenth-century frescoes had all been buried under lime plaster at some point, and he took them back out. The result is fifty rooms that feel like a house somebody has lived in for a very long time rather than a hotel that was decorated.
It reopened for the 2026 season with more changes than usual – a new gastronomic restaurant, a new bar in the old part of the palace, and a private pool club on the terraces.
The last twenty minutes of light, which is when the pool is actually best.
Fifty rooms, no two sets of floor tiles the same.
Room Count 50 rooms and suites, inside the eleventh-century Palazzo d’Afflitto
Dinner is two hours and there is no point fighting it.
The Rooms
I had room 312, a Superior Sea View of about forty square metres, and it did not feel like forty – the ceilings are vaulted and high, and the French doors open straight onto a terrace big enough to eat on. The floor tiles are hand-painted and no two rooms have the same ones. I woke up when the light came across them in the morning, which brings me to the curtains: they are more of a suggestion than a blackout. Pack an eye mask.
The antique armoire is beautiful and designed for someone who packed a trunk in 1890. My packing cubes did not fit it in any arrangement I could find, and by the second day I had surrendered to the chair.
The bathroom made up for it. Original vaulted ceiling, a rainfall shower with real pressure, a soaking tub positioned so the coastline sits in the window, and enough counter space for an unreasonable amount of skincare. Acqua di Parma throughout.
The categories run from Doubles at thirty-five square metres through Junior Suites and Suites up to Villa Margherita, which is a private villa with its own butler and chef. Layouts vary a great deal here, so it is worth being specific about what you want when you book – terrace size and which way the room faces are not interchangeable.
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The Food & Beverage
Executive chef Armando Aristarco is from Campania and came back to it after years in Bahrain, Singapore and Dubai, and the cooking is at its best when it stays close to home. The burrata with anchovies and lemon zest sounds like it should not work and tastes like the sea meeting a meadow. The sea urchin pasta was technically immaculate and left me completely unmoved – I wanted the Mediterranean and got a demonstration of knife skills. Dinner runs roughly 120 to 150 euros a head before wine.
The fine-dining room has been rebuilt since my stay as Il Pantaleone, out on one of the terraces, with tasting menus built around land, sea and the garden. Caruso Grill by the pool is where I actually ate most of my meals – wood-fired, unfussy, and no worse for it.
The bar has also changed: it is now Adagio, under the eighteenth-century frescoes, doing botanical and citrus drinks. When I was there the bartender did not really use a menu – he would listen to what you said over the first drink and come back with something built from it. I mentioned ginger once and got ginger, Campari and something he would not name.
Breakfast was the best service in the building. Salvatore had my cappuccino coming before I sat down, and once I said I liked the house yogurt he simply started bringing extra.
The Wellness
The pool is the wellness programme here, and it earns it. It is heated year-round to about 28 degrees, open nine to six, and it is cut into the edge of the terrace so the water and the Gulf of Salerno line up and stop being two separate things. It never felt crowded while I was there, mostly because a good proportion of the guests were photographing it rather than getting in.
There is a pool concierge – a job title that sounds absurd until you meet Marco, who turns up with towels, moves an umbrella by about fifteen degrees without being asked, and remembers that you take sparkling with lime.
New since my stay is La Piscina, a private pool club on the tiered terraces with loungers and cabanas, which is the sort of thing this property can absorb without changing character.
There is a spa, tucked into the lower levels – I found it twice by accident on my way to somewhere else, which tells you something about the corridors. Sunrise yoga runs twice a week in the garden for about eighty euros, and at that hour, up there, it is worth the alarm.
What Missed The Mark
Afternoon service at the pool. Morning drinks arrived in ten minutes; an Aperol Spritz at four in the afternoon took twenty, every single time, and I started ordering before I wanted one. There was also a sommelier evening that did not land – a lot of confidence and not much listening. The individual people here are superb and several of them made my stay; the consistency between three in the afternoon and eight at night is not there yet.
Don’t Miss
Get to the pool terrace before the pool opens. At sunrise the mist is still sitting on the mountains and the water reads as cloud rather than water, and there is nobody there. It is the thing I remember most clearly about the whole stay.
The complimentary garden tour with Gaetano turns into a botany lesson if you let it, and the cooking class taught me that I have been overcooking pasta my entire life.
And make friends with the shuttle drivers. Giorgio gave me a back-streets tour of Amalfi, waited outside a ceramic shop far longer than he should have, and collected me from a restaurant that was not on his route.
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Good To Know
The hotel closes for the winter and comes back in spring – confirm the opening date for your year before you plan anything around it. For April to October, book three to six months out.
Take the private transfer from Naples airport or Amalfi town; it runs roughly 150 to 250 euros depending on the car and it is worth every euro, because the alternative involves stairs with luggage.
This property is vertical. If stairs are a problem, say so at booking and be specific.
And pack an eye mask – the curtains are decorative.
value added perks
with booking with Coco Tran:
- Daily Breakfast for Two, Per Bedroom
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- Welcome Amenity
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- Hotel Credit: USD 100
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- One Category Room Upgrade at Time of Arrival, Based on Availability
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- Early Check-In/Late Check-Out, Based on Availability
Last Thoughts
Caruso is for people who already know what they want from the Amalfi Coast and have decided it is not a beach club. Three hundred and fifty metres up, you trade swimming in the sea and walking to shops for silence, space and a view that most of this coast would charge double for. Honeymooners, solo travellers who want room to think, and anybody who has already done the Positano circuit and found it busier than they hoped – this is the one.
Skip it if you need sand within walking distance, if you want anything resembling nightlife, or if stairs are difficult. And know going in that the service has peaks and troughs rather than a flat line.
In shoulder season with Bellini Club perks attached, it is one of the best-value grand hotels in Italy. In August at rack rate, the question is simply how much that view is worth to you – and I would still say quite a lot.