Monastero Santa Rosa

The sfogliatella Santa Rosa was invented in this building. The nuns made it in their refectory, the hotel says, to soothe the ailing stomach of their Mother Superior, and for whatever pastry could not cure they kept an apothecary, stocked from the garden. The convent was finished in 1681 on the cliff of Monte San Pancrazio, above Conca dei Marini, and dedicated to St Rose of Lima. A decade's restoration reopened it in 2012 as twenty rooms and suites, behind pale walls with a scalloped parapet and a little cupola. Below, the gardens drop four terraces, through lemon trees and roses, to a heated infinity pool whose far edge gives onto nothing but the Gulf of Salerno and the wakes of boats a long way down.

Recommended for couples, and anyone else over sixteen, who want the coast laid out beneath them rather than around them. The Path of the Gods and the lesser-known Valley of the Ironworkers can both be walked from the hotel, and the free shuttle makes the ten-minute drive into Amalfi until midnight. The spa sits in the convent's 17th-century vaults and uses oils from Santa Maria Novella, a pharmacy at work since 1612, so the nuns' apothecary has been succeeded by one older than their convent. The refectory itself is now Il Refettorio, where Alfonso Crescenzo now cooks Campanian food. Private boats go out along the coast for half a day or a whole one. Look back up from the water and the monastery is as Bianca Sharma saw it, before she bought it in 2000.