Maratea by Marc Zakian
Featured Hotel in Maratea
La Locanda delle Donne Monache
See all hotels in Maratea >
The Portofino of the south is back: after decades of fading glory, Maratea is once again the beau monde’s summer hang out, and Amalfi merely a lunch stop for Romans heading down the coast to Basilicata’s tiny kiss of Mediterranean shoreline.
I hand over my car at the gates of the Santa Venere. Inside, only the hum of electric buggies competes with the stroke of sea on the limestone cliffs. In the 60s Santa Venere was the signature hotel for the dolce vita. At the reception desk a bound-leather guest book tells stories of the legendary years: Burton and Taylor tristed here while making Antony and Cleopatra, and Sinatra rested his tonsils during European tours. Now the glitterati are back; I signed in a few names down from Ivana Trump, and daytime-TV girl Melanie Sykes.
While a buggy whisks my luggage over hotel lawns manicured to Wimbledon standards, I head for Santa Venere’s cliff top bar and restaurant. From my lounger I have a perfect view of the hotel’s jetty. Mortals like me enter at the front gate, but the “back door” entrance is classic Italian style: bronzed lovelies in pristine white linen step off yachts which are more floating villas than boats.
Maratea’s phoenix-like revival is the brainchild of local-boy-made-good Pietro Carnivale. The pocket sized ex-lawyer is spending twenty-million pounds to “give Maratea the joys of the Amalfi coastline, without the permanent traffic jam and the vulgar chaos”. His motto is exclusive style in an unpolluted environment and his ambition is to make the coastal resort car free. It’s a bold man who comes between an Italian and his beloved macchina, but in compensation he promises a resort free of noisy night clubs and full of exclusive boutiques, including Mondo Maratea’s own cashmere shop - selling sweaters at £300.
Signor Carnevale can be found most evenings in Santa Venere’s restaurant, indulging his passion for dining. The authors of his culinary fantasy are Vincenzo and Salvatore Pinto, the little and large brothers who run the restaurant. You could justify holidaying here just for the fratelli Pinto’s culinary masterworks: fresh pasta made daily and pastries so light they could float on a breeze.
Up on the hill Maratea’s old town looks down on Santa Venere’s swank with insouciance. Lolling down the side of mount Saint Biagio, its medieval houses and churches still bear the cracks of an earthquake which struck in the ‘80s. The town was - in every sense - petrified. Many shut up house never to return, while those who stayed were gripped by an inertia which is finally melting with the arrival of tourism. Locals are still slightly bemused that people would seek out a place so many of their kith and kin fled from.
The town butcher, Salvatore - a man so large it’s a mystery how he gets though the door of his shop - sits outside his establishment scrutinising passing visitors. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” Franco the friendly bar man tells me. “He’s just jealous that the visitors spend all their money in the linen shops and not in his”. I look around me to see that the piazza bar is full of people gleefully inspecting shopping bags full of the local artisan lace.
As dusk falls I head for Maratea’s port. In 1997 the world’s press camped out here while Diana and Dodi spent a waterborne love-week here. The walkways which surround the millionaires’ yachts have become catwalks for the nightly look-at-me parade. I claim a ringside seat outside the Café Antico. Crowds of tanned and coutured bodies are trying to out-bling each other. When rumours spread that the inter-Milan team had boated in that day, the fashion frenzy reached fever pitch.
High above us, on the mountain which surrounds Maratea, the lights go up on a giant statue of The Redeemer. The sculpture was a gift of local patron Count Rivetti, placed there to fend off the bad times. The magic has worked – Maratea is back.