3 Best Sights in Ravello, The Amalfi Coast

Ravello's first bishop, Orso Papiciò, founded this cathedral in 1086. Rebuilt in the 12th and 17th centuries, it retains traces of medieval frescoes in the transept, a marble portal, and a three-story 13th-century bell tower playfully interwoven with mullioned windows and arches. The 12th-century bronze door has 54 embossed panels depicting Christ's life, and saints, prophets, plants, and animals, all narrating biblical lore. Ancient columns divide the nave's three aisles, and treasures include sarcophagi from Roman times and paintings by the southern Renaissance artist Andrea da Salerno. Most impressive are the two medieval pulpits: the earlier one (on your left as you face the altar) is inset with a mosaic scene of Jonah and the whale, symbolizing death and redemption. The more famous one opposite was commissioned by Nicola Rufolo in 1272 and created by Niccolò di Bartolomeo da Foggia, with exquisite mosaic work, bas-reliefs, and six twisting columns sitting on lion pedestals. An eagle grandly tops the inlaid marble lectern.

A chapel to the left of the apse is dedicated to San Pantaleone, a physician beheaded in the 3rd century in Nicomedia. Every July 27, devout believers gather in hopes of witnessing a miracle (similar to that of San Gennaro in Naples), in which the saint's blood, collected in a vial and set out on an inlaid marble altar, appears to liquefy and come to a boil.

In the crypt is the Museo del Duomo, which displays religious treasures, including many from the 13th century during the reign of Frederick II of Sicily.

To the south of Ravello's main square, a somewhat hilly 15-minute walk along Via San Francesco brings you to Ravello's showstopper, the Villa Cimbrone, whose dazzling gardens perch 1,500 feet above the sea. This medieval-style fantasy was created in 1905 by England's Lord Grimthorpe and made world-famous in the 1930s when Greta Garbo found sanctuary from the press here. The Gothic castello-palazzo sits amid idyllic gardens that are divided by the grand Avenue of Immensity pathway, leading in turn to the literal high point of any trip to the Amalfi Coast—the Belvedere of Infinity. This grand stone parapet, adorned with stone busts, overlooks the entire Bay of Salerno and frames a panorama that the late writer Gore Vidal, a longtime Ravello resident, described as the most beautiful in the world. The villa itself is now a five-star hotel.

Directly off Ravello's main piazza is the Villa Rufolo, home to enchanting gardens, many of which frame a stunning vista of the Bay of Salerno. If the master storyteller Boccaccio is to be believed, the villa was built in the 13th century by Landolfo Rufolo, whose immense fortune stemmed from trade with the Moors and the Saracens. Norman and Arab architecture mingle in a welter of color-filled gardens so lush the composer Richard Wagner used them as inspiration for Klingsor's Garden, the home of the Flower Maidens, in his opera Parsifal. Beyond the Arab-Sicilian cloister and the Norman tower lie the two terrace gardens. The lower one, the "Wagner Terrace," is often the site for Ravello Festival concerts, with the orchestra perched on a platform constructed over the precipice. Sir Francis Nevile Reid, a Scotsman, acquired the villa in 1851 and hired Michele Ruggiero, head of the excavations at Pompeii, to restore the villa to its full splendor and replant the gardens with rare cycads, cordylines, and palms. Highlights of the house are its Moorish cloister—an Arabic-Sicilian delight with interlacing lancet arcs and polychromatic palmette decoration—and the 14th-century Torre Maggiore, the so-called Klingsor's Tower, renamed in honor of Richard Wagner's landmark 1880 visit.