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Ravello Art Hotel Marmorata
Ravello, Italy · Independent · Near Luxury
Eustachio Camera d'Afflitto's paper mill sat on this cove because a waterfall ran past it, and the building is fifteenth century: Amalfi paper was a serious business for a very long time. His son turned the mill into a hotel in 1983, and his granddaughters Anna and Manuela run it now. A saltwater pool hangs off the cliff, a staircase drops from the terrace straight into the sea, and the restaurant still carries the mill's name, L'Antica Cartiera.
- 34 rooms
- Opened 1983
- Neighborhood: Marmorata
About Ravello Art Hotel Marmorata
- The conversion was done as a ship. The family bought salvaged fittings off real boats to furnish the rooms, and the look has stuck: sailor blue, walnut and porthole windows.
- The hotel has its own cove at Marmorata, between Ravello and Minori, with nothing walkable nearby and the hill town of Ravello a fifteen-minute drive up the switchbacks.
History
The building is a fifteenth-century paper mill on the shore at Marmorata, below Ravello. It stood here for a practical reason: a waterfall came down beside it, and falling water was what drove the hammers that beat rags into pulp. The mill belonged to Eustachio Camera d'Afflitto, of a long-established Amalfi Coast family. When he died his son inherited it and, thinking about his two daughters' futures, decided to turn it into a hotel. It opened in 1983.
He fitted the place out like a ship, buying up original fixtures from boats and working them into the interiors, and that reading has stayed: nautical rooms in sailor blue and walnut, porthole windows, framed charts, cane chairs in the bar, antique pieces set sparingly on honed tile floors. The family moved into apartments built under the hotel. Both daughters worked in the business from the end of their studies and took it over when their father died; Anna and Manuela Camera d'Afflitto own and run it today, and have kept restyling it season by season, adding four sea-view apartments alongside the hotel and reworking the suites and the terrace.
The hotel is seasonal. There is a saltwater pool cantilevered over the rocks, a stairway from the terrace directly down into the sea, and L'Antica Cartiera, the restaurant named for the old mill, which serves fish and house-made pasta indoors or on a terrace under canvas among bougainvillea and lemon trees.
The setting
Marmorata is a cove of its own on the coast road between Amalfi and Minori, a couple of kilometres below the hilltop town of Ravello, whose commune it belongs to. This stretch of coast made paper for centuries: Amalfi was one of the earliest paper-making centres in Europe, working rags into sheets in mills built wherever a stream ran fast enough to drive the machinery, and the valley behind Amalfi is still called the Valle delle Ferriere for the ironworks and mills that filled it. Minori, with its Roman villa and its pastry shops, is a few hundred metres along the shore. Amalfi and its cathedral are about two kilometres the other way. Ravello, with Villa Rufolo, Villa Cimbrone and the Niemeyer auditorium, is fifteen minutes up the switchbacks, and buses from Salerno stop in front of the hotel on request.
Restaurants and bars
- Restaurant Antica Cartiera — Restaurant
- Orizzonte Cocktail Bar & Bistrot — Bar
Experiences
- Hotel Beach Club — Deck chairs, sun beds, umbrellas, a wellness pool with sea water, a small private dock and the natural waterfall of the Marmorata bay.
- Boat rental — Boat rental offered by the hotel.
Amenities
- Parking area
- Boat rental
- Transfer
- Excursions
- Breakfast buffet served in veranda overlooking the sea
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