Last winter, while most of the Amalfi coast was in its usual hibernation mode, the road just above Positano experienced a daily flurry of activity. First trucks would arrive. These weren’t the usual film pantechnicons but smaller ones (originally a track for donkeys, the road is tiny). Then came cars with blacked-out windows, choreographed to perfection — as each vehicle arrived an electric gate would open so it could drop down into the highly private Treville. Once home to the Italian film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli, it’s now a luxurious boutique hotel.
Last winter’s blacked-out cars contained actors and crew coming to film Costiera, a new crime drama from the Breaking Bad and 30 Rock director Adam Bernstein. Treville stars as a luxurious hotel, which is not exactly a stretch. Jesse Williams plays Daniel, a former US Marine who joins a hotel staff to investigate the kidnapping of the owner’s daughter. I think we can assume that, like The White Lotus, this will be a show about bad things happening in a beautiful place.
When I gaze at the town of Positano from one of Treville’s many terraces for the first time, I reckon that I’m looking at the most theatrical place in the world. The cliffs are like stage curtains that draw your eye to the town. A bright yellow cathedral with an extravagantly tiled dome roof takes centre stage, with terraces of houses clinging to the hills, while boats are moored prettily offshore, waves tickling their sides.
“The only place in the world conceived on a vertical rather than a horizontal axis,” the painter Paul Klee, with his draughtsman’s eye, said of Positano. “It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone,” John Steinbeck wrote, more poetically, in 1953. These days it’s safe to say that Positano’s dreaminess is somewhat diluted by day-tripping crowds. The Amalfi coast season runs from April until late October, and is particularly intense from June to September, but Treville has a very privileged place within it.
In 1969 Zeffirelli decided to buy a house here, then over 35 years expanded it by buying the surrounding properties and employing set designers from his operas and films to transform it into a home that matches Positano for sheer, highly vertiginous theatricality. Since then Treville has been a beautifully honed synthesis of pattern and colour — handmade tiles on the floor, wafty curtains on the terraces, ceramic plates on a wall next to the kitchen — and is still as Zeffirelli designed. When he owned it Maria Callas, Elton John and Liza Minnelli visited. Elizabeth Taylor stayed so often that even the Italian paparazzi would eventually leave her alone.
In 2010 Treville quietly became a hotel. Now owned by the US and Canada-based Friedland family, its hybrid home-hotel vibe is completely seductive. Photographs dotted around show Zeffirelli posing in kaftans with his neighbour, Rudolf Nureyev, and hanging out with Minnelli. The name translates as “three villas” but there are now five, all in gelato colours, and just 16 rooms and suites (where I stayed), with a few more due to be added in the middle of this year.
Last year Madonna and JLo booked in — at different times — to Casa Zeffirelli, the four-bedroom villa the director kept for his own use. The original furniture, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and made in Syria, is still in place and there are front-and-centre views onto the Amalfi’s crinkle-cut coast. Casa Bernstein, named after Leonard Bernstein, who also stayed regularly, is another zinger, with a vast circular shower in what was once a bread oven and its own goldfish pond. But all the rooms have a dreamy vista, beautiful at any time of day and particularly heart-stopping as the sun sets.
• Read our full guide to the Amalfi coast
It may have turned down the chance to let Rob Rinder and Monica Galetti go behind the scenes for Amazing Hotels: Beyond the Lobby but Treville is not one of those Fort Knox-style hotels where the ultra-rich and famous squirrel themselves away. Yes, a lift now goes straight from reception to Casa Zeffirelli and some of the rooms have private swimming pools, but everyone gathers at the restaurant Maestro’s for properly, resolutely Italian food — creamy burrata with tomatoes gathered from the vines around the hotel, squid caught just offshore, cloud-like tiramisu — outside on the vine-covered terrace. In the cream-tiled Bianca bar, the white-jacketed bar staff create cocktails that are all potions and panache. Sting popped by recently and said it looked the same as when he hung out here in the 1980s.
Treville’s spa is housed in a Victorian conservatory that was part of Zeffirelli’s 1982 production of La traviata. As I emerge from a truly spectacular massage given by the therapist, a butterfly flutters delightfully past the open window.
The different parts of Treville are linked with walkways that, on my visit in early autumn, have pumpkins and gourds growing through them, all in little baskets woven from string, while the vegetable beds below are filled with lettuces. Every wall is studded with jasmine. The Aleppo pine trees seem to have been designed to gnarl in the most picturesque way possible. Head down and naturally the rugged little bathing platform built into the rocks has been enhanced with striped sunloungers and parasols.
• 23 of the best things to do on the Amalfi coast
However, Treville’s USP is that it’s not quite in Positano. Like the Hotel Cipriani in Venice, you are part of it and also separate (and the hotel has its own sleek wooden boat, which does the five-minute boat trip into Positano’s harbour). When I visit, Positano heaves with visitors even though the season is winding down. Every other shop is selling china or kitschy (but actually rather fun) bags and clothes covered in lemons and infused with dolce vita nostalgia.
Annoyingly that hack of popping into a posh hotel for a drink or spa treatment doesn’t work at Treville. Drop-ins are discouraged with a £250 cover charge. You can understand why: come summer every superyacht type is trying to book tables here. But a new drama on Amazon Prime, which starts screening later this year, is going to allow a few more people to see inside Treville by streaming it.
Cast and crew were put up at the Tramonto d’Oro hotel in nearby Praiano, hence all the car choreography. Do I feel smug that I got to stay at Treville while Jesse Williams didn’t? Since you mention it, very.
This article contains affiliate links, which can earn us revenue
Sarah Turner was a guest of Treville, which has B&B doubles from £652 (villatreville.com). Fly to Naples
Three stylish, affordable Amalfi coast stays
By Sarah Turner
La Fenice B&B, Positano
Between Treville and the heart of Positano, this much-loved seven-room B&B delivers panoramic views without a punishing price tag. The furnishings — rather lovely tiled floors — may be plain but there’s a large seawater swimming pool and steps down to a near-private beach, while the hotel’s gardens feed into the menu including herbs, apricot and lemon trees. Breakfasts are generous, as are the owners, who also serve simple lunches on the terrace. It’s a quick walk into Positano.
Details B&B doubles from £100 (lafenicepositano.com)
• 25 of the best hotels on the Amalfi coast
Villarena Relais, Nerano
Above a glittering bay, Villarena Relais has potent Talented Mr Ripley charm. Here, five apartments overlook the sea and the trio of outcrops that make up the tiny Li Galli islands. Guests share a swimming pool and each apartment has kitchen facilities, while a 15-minute walk brings you to the bar-lined Marina del Cantone, with its beach. Yes, given the vertiginous nature of the Amalfi coast it’s likely to take longer to get back, but the owner Guglielmo’s restaurant, which serves food from his own farm, as well as locally caught seafood, is a very pleasing reward.
Details Room-only doubles from £70 (sawdays.co.uk)
Hotel Villa San Michele, Ravello
While Ravello is heartstoppingly beautiful, its hillside position can feel very rarefied. A ten-minute drive along hairpin bends and closer to the sea, this pretty whitewashed hotel is a well-priced find in this part of the world. Family-run, with a popular trattoria attached, there are 12 rooms, most with terraces to soak up the sea views and steps (there are always steps in the Amalfi) down to a pretty bathing platform.
Details B&B doubles from £159 (hotel-villasanmichele.it)
For all, fly to Naples
Become a subscriber and, along with unlimited digital access to The Times and The Sunday Times, you can enjoy a collection of travel offers and competitions curated by our trusted travel partners, especially for Times+ members
