Positano, Italy

POSITANO, ITALY | "La Dolce Vita on the Cliff"

Positano is the most vertically dramatic village in Europe — a former medieval fishing settlement on the Amalfi Coast that climbs the cliff face above the Tyrrhenian Sea in a cascade of pastel-colored villas, bougainvillea-draped terraces, and narrow staircase streets that descend from the SS163 coastal road to the two beaches of Spiaggia Grande and Fornillo. The village was painted by Picasso in 1917, inhabited by Steinbeck and Hemingway, and has been the defining image of the Italian Mediterranean for a century of painters, novelists, and film directors — the specific combination of the cliffside architecture, the turquoise water, and the quality of the afternoon light that justifies every superlative the town has accumulated.

The colors are the saturated pastels of the stucco facades — terracotta, lemon yellow, dusty rose, and white — against the deep turquoise of the Tyrrhenian and the dark green of the macchia scrub on the cliff faces above the village. In the late afternoon when the sun drops behind the Lattari Mountains and the light softens to amber, the entire cliff face turns gold in a way that makes every photograph of Positano look like a painting.