Ravello

Odds and ends

Posted May 8, 2013 by hil

Here are a few random images. One of the things I like best about wandering around the towns in every place we’ve been is finding the pathways, steps and areas where everyday life is going on. This pathway above, in such an area between Atrani and Amalfi, was wonderfully narrow!

There were many places selling ceramics, but at this one in Ravello we bought a beautiful bowl and plate. We also had a nice conversation with the people running it, who were telling us about how difficult it was now under new government regulations on small business to employ enough people in their factory. It was a nice glimpse into their life.

There are lots of small religious markers such as this in numerous places we’ve been, but I just really like this as a photo.

There were lots of these beautiful bright-green-backed lizards wherever we walked. I guess they are skinks of some sort? They would be sunning themselves on walls or stones and flick back into the greenery too quickly for me to take a photo. I spent too much time trying!

Villa Cimbrone

Posted May 6, 2013 by hil

At the seaward end of the buttress or cliffs you can see sticking out above the hills in this photo is the site of Villa Cimbrone, an historic house and garden estate in Ravello. The house, some of which dates from the 11th century is now an eyebrow hotel. Their site has details of the history and descriptions of the garden. The gardens were redone extensively in the early 1900’s, and are open to the public. I was interested in seeing them because, among other famous people, the Bloomsbury Group used to hang out there, and yes, it was quite possible to imagine them there. The gardens are extensive, and a mixture of very formal and ‘pretty little wildernesses’.

Looking back to the entrance tower.

The beautiful flowering wisteria along the Avenue of Immensity.

The belvedere on the Terrace of Infinity.

The famous view out to sea and the horizon (in the opposite direction to the one above!) is indeed as beautiful as reputed, but I only seemed to get good photos of the view down, which was also amazing!

Hotel guests having tea – or is it coffee – and newspapers.

For some reason these rose gardens were where I imagined the Bloomsbury’s hanging out.

There were many sculptures, including one in a grotto. I liked this one of David best. We read it was a Donatello, but googling suggests otherwise, that it’s by Neapolitan sculptor Gioacchino Varlese.

Ravello

Posted May 6, 2013 by hil

I’d thought of the Amalfi coast as a collection of quite distinct individual towns strung out along a coastline, but it is more of an entity than that. They tend to blend into one another as much as the landscape allows, and together occupy a relatively small area. The hill towns are not inland but high up, overlooking the coastal towns. By chance we stayed in one of them, Ravello, and it was lovely!

This seemed the iconic photo of the place for me. The hills are beautiful, steep, heavily terraced and gardened, and everywhere there are lemons!

The roads are narrow and windy. The locals and the buses have negotiating the hairpin bends down to a fine art, using a language of toots to communicate and choreograph the traffic. This is an example of how cars are garaged. Just along the road I saw a couple of ponies being tethered in a similar but more open area.