Il San Pietro di Positano

Carlino Cinque drilled holes through the walls and ceilings of his own hotel so the vines outside could grow in, and in one glass-walled sitting room a branch has reached the ceiling. In 1962 he bought the promontory, then a rock with a small seventeenth-century fisherman's chapel on it, and opened with 33 rooms in 1970. There are 57 now, stepped down the cliff below the chapel. The one to ask for has a wrought-iron four-poster on a floor of blue tile stars, and arched glass doors to a terrace under a cane pergola. Ten terraces of organic garden feed the kitchens, and half the gym sits under a lemon orchard, which is as good an argument for a gym as anyone has made. The hard part was the lift, blasted 88 metres down through the cliff from the lobby to the beach.

Recommended for couples, and for families whose children are ten or older, the youngest the hotel takes. At the bottom of the lift are yoga on the beach, the tennis court and Carlino, which cooks local dishes from organic produce. From May the hotel's boat goes out at half past eleven, Sundays excepted, for two hours along the coast, with a stop to swim and a drink on board. Positano's centre is 1.7km by water from the beach club dock, or the hotel's shuttle by road at any hour, which puts the town within reach and no nearer. Zass, for the evening, is Alois Vanlangenaeker's kitchen. The chapel is still on top of the rock. It is three centuries older than the lift, and from a time when getting down to the water was a fisherman's own problem.