Ravello sits on a ridge 365 metres above the Amalfi Coast in Campania, about seven kilometres and a series of hairpin bends up from the town of Amalfi. It has around 2,500 residents, two of the most famous gardens in Italy, and a summer music festival staged on a belvedere built out over the drop.
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THE MOST USEFUL THING TO KNOW FIRST IS THAT RAVELLO IS NOT ON THE COAST. It is above it. There is no beach, no harbour and no sea access whatever: to swim you drive or take a bus down to Amalfi or Minori, which takes twenty to thirty minutes each way on a road of switchbacks. Visitors who book Ravello expecting an Amalfi Coast beach holiday have made a specific and common mistake, and it is worth being clear about rather than tactful.
WHAT RAVELLO IS INSTEAD IS THE QUIET ONE WITH THE VIEWS. Positano and Amalfi are on the water and are extremely busy; Ravello is up in the air, is largely pedestrian, empties in the evening when the day buses leave, and looks down the whole coast from 365 metres. If you want to swim daily, stay below. If you want cool evenings, gardens and somewhere that is still itself at eight in the morning, stay here. Our Amalfi Coast packing list covers the coast proper, the boats and the beaches.
THE TWO GARDENS ARE THE DESTINATION. VILLA RUFOLO, off the main square, is the eleventh-century one with the Moorish cloister and the terraced gardens where Wagner found his setting for Parsifal; its belvedere is where the festival concerts happen. VILLA CIMBRONE is a fifteen-minute walk out along a lane and is the better of the two: its TERRACE OF INFINITY is a long balustrade lined with marble busts at the very edge of the ridge, with nothing below it but air and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Gore Vidal, who lived here for decades, called the view from it the most beautiful he had ever seen.
And what you pack is set by altitude, by stepped lanes, and by the fact that this is a dressier town than its size suggests.
The Gardens, the Square and the Walk Down
Two villas, one piazza, and a footpath to the sea.
PIAZZA DUOMO is the whole centre: the cathedral with its bronze doors and two carved marble pulpits, the entrance to Villa Rufolo, a handful of cafes and the bus stop. It is small enough to cross in a minute and is where everything begins.
VILLA RUFOLO takes an hour, and the gardens are at their best in late spring when the terraces are planted out. VILLA CIMBRONE takes longer than you expect, because the walk out is pretty and the garden is large: allow two hours, go early or late, and note that the Terrace of Infinity is a narrow strip at the edge of a 300-metre drop and gets crowded at midday.
THE WALK DOWN TO THE SEA is the thing most visitors do not know about and is genuinely good. A stepped path drops from Ravello through lemon terraces and the village of Atrani to the water, taking about an hour downhill, and Atrani is a tiny square almost entirely enclosed by buildings and is the nicest place on this coast to sit. WALK DOWN AND TAKE THE BUS BACK UP; doing it in reverse is a different and much harder day.
THE FESTIVAL runs through the summer, with orchestral and chamber concerts on the Villa Rufolo belvedere and in other venues around the town. It is the reason Ravello is known in music, it fills accommodation, and the programme and dates change every year, so check them when you book rather than assuming.
Otherwise: the Auditorium Oscar Niemeyer, a white concrete wave of a building dropped into a medieval town in 2010 and still argued about; the ceramics shops, which are a genuine local craft; and the lemon terraces, which are the agriculture of this coast and are maintained by hand on walls built centuries ago.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
The Coast, Pompeii and Naples
Twenty minutes down to Amalfi, an hour to Pompeii, and the ferries from below.
AMALFI is seven kilometres and about twenty-five minutes down by bus, with the paper museum and the cathedral steps, and the ferries along the coast leave from there. POSITANO is forty minutes beyond it. MINORI and MAIORI are closer and quieter, with the beaches most Ravello guests actually use.
SALERNO is about forty minutes east and is the practical transport hub for this coast, with trains to Naples and Rome, and is covered in our Salerno packing list. POMPEII is about an hour and our Pompeii packing list covers it; NAPLES is an hour and a half and is covered in our Naples packing list.
Getting around: DO NOT DRIVE HERE IF YOU CAN AVOID IT. The coast road is narrow, continuously hairpinned, shared with full-size buses that have right of way in practice, and parking in Ravello is a paid garage with limited spaces. The SITA buses up from Amalfi are frequent and cheap. Ravello itself is pedestrian: cars stop at the edge and you walk in, which means carrying bags on a slope.
When to Go
May, June, September and early October. The gardens close in winter.
A Mediterranean climate moderated by altitude: summer from June to August at 27 to 30C, which is several degrees cooler than the coast below and markedly breezier; winter from December to February mild at 12 to 14C and wet; spring and autumn warm and settled.
MAY AND JUNE ARE THE PICK and May especially, because the gardens are at their peak and the coast below is not yet full. SEPTEMBER AND EARLY OCTOBER are the other window, warm, with the sea still swimmable if you go down for it and the crowds thinning.
JULY AND AUGUST are the festival and the peak, which cuts both ways: the town is at its most alive and its most expensive, accommodation needs booking months ahead, and the day-trip buses fill the piazza from mid-morning. Ravello is still cooler than Amalfi, which is a real advantage in August.
WINTER IS THE SEASON TO CHECK. Many hotels and restaurants close from November to March, the gardens reduce their hours or shut, the bus service thins and the weather is wet. The town is beautiful and almost empty, and your choices will be few.
Is Ravello Safe for Women Travelers
Extremely safe. The drops, the steps and the road are the hazards.
US State Department travel advisory: the Italy advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/italy, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
THE DROPS ARE THE FIRST THING AND THEY ARE REAL. The Terrace of Infinity is a narrow walkway at the edge of a 300-metre fall with a balustrade of modest height, the Villa Rufolo belvedere is the same, and several of the lanes have low walls above long drops. In the dark, in a crowd, or taking a photograph while stepping backwards, these are genuinely dangerous places. Treat them as cliff edges, because that is what they are.
THE STEPS AND THE SLOPE ARE THE SECOND. Ravello is built on a ridge and almost nothing in it is level: the lanes are stone, worn smooth, frequently stepped and slick in rain, and the walk from the car park or the bus stop to your accommodation is on them with your bags. Flat shoes with grip, and a bag you can carry.
THE ROAD IS THE THIRD. The Amalfi Coast road is one of the more demanding drives in Europe and the stretch up to Ravello is hairpins with blind corners and buses. If you are driving, drive it slowly and give way readily; if you are a passenger prone to motion sickness, this is the journey to take something for.
Italy is in the EU, so a UK Global Health Insurance Card or an EU European Health Insurance Card gives you state-provided medically necessary care on the same terms as an Italian resident. That means the same ticket, the co-payment Italians make, rather than nothing, and it does not cover repatriation, so travel insurance sits on top of it. Italian public hospitals are good and the emergency department, the pronto soccorso, treats anyone who arrives. Pharmacies, farmacie, are marked with a green cross, are staffed by pharmacists who can advise and dispense for minor problems, and post a rota for nights and Sundays on the door. Tap water is drinkable across the country, including from the public fountains that are common in Italian towns.
On crime there is essentially nothing. Ravello is a small, prosperous, heavily visited town with very low crime, and the ordinary Italian caution about bags belongs in Naples rather than here. Leave nothing visible in a car in the garage.
Socially this is very easy. The town is tiny, safe to walk at any hour, used to international visitors and particularly to the festival audience, and English is widely spoken. A woman eating alone is unremarkable, and the evening after the day buses leave is the pleasantest time to be out.
The Ravello Packing List
Shoes with grip for worn stone on a slope
Stepped lanes, smooth stone, steep gradient, and a walk in from the car park with bags. This is the first item. For the stepped path down to Atrani, which is long and uneven, waterproof hiking boots and merino wool socks.
Base layers, because 365 metres is cooler and much windier
Ravello runs several degrees below the coast and the ridge catches wind the shore does not, so evenings here need a layer from September through to June while Amalfi below does not. Merino regulates in both directions and handles the climb back up without holding smell. Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the garment you will use daily here.
A warm layer for an evening concert
A fleece mid layer or a wrap. A festival concert on the belvedere after dark, at altitude, in wind, is colder than the afternoon suggests, and it is the single most common discomfort visitors report.
Something smarter than a coastal holiday needs
Ravello is dressier than its size implies and the festival makes it more so. One outfit that does not need ironing, and shoes you can both walk stone in and sit in a concert in, which is a real constraint here.
A light rain and wind layer
A packable rain jacket for women. The ridge is exposed, showers arrive quickly off the sea, and the gardens have little shelter.
Sun protection in the gardens
A wide brim sun hat and sunscreen. The Terrace of Infinity, the Rufolo terraces and the walk to Cimbrone are fully exposed, and the altitude slightly increases the strength.
The small things
An insulated water bottle, refillable in the piazza. Swimwear, for the trip down to Minori or Amalfi, remembering it is a bus ride rather than a walk. Motion sickness tablets if the coast road affects you. AND THE TWO THINGS THAT SHAPE THE TRIP: understand before booking that there is no beach here, and walk down to Atrani rather than up.
Essential Resources for Women in Ravello
Emergency numbers: 112 for all emergencies, the single European number for police, ambulance and fire. 113 for police directly. Coverage is good in the town and patchy on the stepped paths down to the coast.
Main hospital or clinic: Ravello has a small local health facility. The nearest hospital with an emergency department is the Ospedale Costa d'Amalfi at Castiglione di Ravello, below the town, with the larger Ospedale San Giovanni di Dio e Ruggi d'Aragona in Salerno about 45 minutes away. On this road that is a long transfer and is worth knowing. Dial 112.
Official health authority: the Ministero della Salute, the Italian health ministry. Carry a UK Global Health Insurance Card or an EU card. The local facility is small and anything serious means Salerno, which is about 45 minutes down a hairpin road
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in Rome.
Official tourism authority: ENIT, the Italian national tourist board. And with the Ravello tourist office in Piazza Duomo, which holds the Villa Rufolo and Villa Cimbrone opening hours, the Ravello Festival programme and the SITA bus timetable down to Amalfi
Ravello is not on the coast. It is 365 metres above it with no beach and no sea access; swimming means a bus or drive down to Amalfi or Minori.
The Terrace of Infinity is a cliff edge. A narrow walkway above a 300-metre drop with a low balustrade, crowded at midday.
Walk down to Atrani and take the bus back up. About an hour downhill through lemon terraces; the reverse is a much harder day.
The Ravello Festival fills the town in summer. Check the programme when you book, and bring a warm layer for an evening concert at altitude.
Solo women safety assessment: Ravello is among the easiest and safest places in Italy to travel alone. It is tiny, almost entirely pedestrian, safe to walk at any hour, thoroughly used to international visitors and particularly to the festival audience, English is widely spoken, a woman eating alone is unremarkable, and the evening after the day buses leave is the pleasantest time to be out. Crime is close to absent and the ordinary Italian caution about bags belongs in Naples rather than here. The hazards are physical and the first is genuinely serious: THE DROPS. The Terrace of Infinity is a narrow walkway at the edge of a 300-metre fall behind a balustrade of modest height, the Villa Rufolo belvedere is the same, and several lanes have low walls above long drops, so in the dark, in a crowd, or stepping backwards for a photograph these are dangerous places and should be treated as the cliff edges they are. THE STEPS AND SLOPE ARE SECOND, because almost nothing here is level, the stone is worn smooth and slick in rain, and the walk in from the car park or bus stop is done with luggage, which makes flat shoes with grip and a carryable bag the two most useful things packed. THE ROAD IS THIRD: the climb from Amalfi is continuous hairpins with blind corners shared with full-size buses, which is a demanding drive and a motion-sickness journey for passengers.
Reading On
For the country-level picture, start with the Italy travel guide for women. For the coast itself, the boats and the beaches, see the Amalfi Coast packing list; for the transport hub to the east the Salerno packing list; and for the obvious day trip the Pompeii packing list. For why wool rather than cotton on a windy ridge after a hot afternoon, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
