It’s the rare traditional-style hotel that really gets us going, but the Santa Caterina is an absolute classic. Family-owned for the better part of a century, it sits high on a hillside facing the sea and the town of Amalfi — guests ride an elevator down to the hotel’s private beach, for the ultimate storybook Italian-coast experience. Santa Caterina is the real deal: the grounds are all terraces, olive groves and lemon orchards, with the kind of jaw-dropping views that make the Amalfi — if we may be painfully earnest — one of the world’s most special places. The look of the building, and of the interiors, is charmingly old-fashioned; there’s no attempted design-boutique guff here, and it comes off timeless rather than dated. The signature restaurant takes in the spectacular view from a terrace on the cliff, while a second serves wood-fired pizza beside the salt-water swimming pool, on the lower deck by the seaside. It’s up there with the best hotels on the Amalfi Coast: elegant yet fairly unpretentious, for what it is, with a bit of the air of a private residence about it, something many lesser hotels try in vain to cultivate. Please note: Hotel Santa Caterina operates seasonally and is closed from November 1 through March 20.
