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01.Cover.BL111.indd 1 25/7/08 17:05:17 GREAT ESCAPES t’s not every day that you arrive at your holiday home to find a find a letter of welcome from a real Italian prince. But then it’s not every day that you stay in a real, 400-year-old Italian palace. The real IThe last member of a dynasty that sprawls back ten centuries, takes in several cardinals, a pope and a clutch of ambassadors, Angelo di Belmonte has twelve titles and over 1000 acres of land – including the extraordinary Palazzo Belmonte – to his name. He still lives Italian in one wing of the palace, but ancient buildings Seeking an alternative to the overdeveloped require molti soldi to shore up their crumbling charms, and so the former guest suites of Amalfi coast, Deri Robins discovers an Italian and Spanish kings are now rented out unchartered tourist territory of unspoilt to discriminating holidaymakers, many of who return year after year. villages and limpid, turquoise seas The Palazzo is found on the Cilento coast. Leaf through most guidebooks to Italy, and you’ll find them strangely unforthcoming about Cilento; you’ll learn that it’s 100 miles south of Naples and within striking distance of Amalfi; other than this, most of the books are pretty vague. We reckoned that this could mean one of two things; either Cilento was a magically undiscovered gem, or that there wasn’t a huge amount to be discovered in the first place. Confounding the tourist We ’d driven down from Rome, a journey I’m not even going to pretend we enjoyed. Italy may do most things incredibly well – opera, gelati, football, organized crime – but one of the things it falls down on is road signage. Unless, of course, century walls and realised that this place was No time to unpack, not properly: not with the intention is to confound visitors (look, even more beautiful than we’d hoped. Turreted, the siren call of the sea within earshot. Cilento’s we’ve seen Romans turning signs the wrong way honeycombed walls half-smothered with waters are far more bather-friendly than round, we’re not being paranoid) in which case bougainvillea and jasmine; archways beckoning Amalfi’s, and while hotel guests can revel in a it does that very well, too. you into cool inner courtyards, from which wide private roped-off corner of golden sand, the By the time we found the turn-off to Santa staircases sweep up to secretive apartments. stream of local families passing by offers endless Maria di Castellabate, we’d seen little so far people-watching opportunities. to sway us towards that ‘hidden gem’, theory You must make the And it’s this proximity to the town that, for us, – until we drove through the Palazzo’s 17th- chicken... means that the Palazzo Belmonte really scores I popped my head around the reception office over those hermetically sealed holiday ‘villages’. The mediaeval hillside door. “You must make the chicken,” the girl “How do you get to Santa Maria?” we asked town of Castellabate, behind the desk insisted; had I been mistaken the staff, feeling a bit like Tony Christie. seen from the fishing village of San Marco for casual kitchen staff? Apparently not; after “You’re in the middle of it,” they replied, and a brief linguistic tussle we did, in fact, make so we were; step outside the Palazzo’s grounds the check-in, and finally took possession of our and you walk straight into the main street of a apartment: two elegant, tall-ceilinged rooms small fishing community, virtually untouched with French windows opening to tiny balconies by tourism; it’s a pleasure to join the leisurely overlooking blue, blue seas and the distant hazy evening passagiata, with its preening young smudge of Capri in the distance. bloods, pretty girls made up to the nines, and “honeycombed walls, half- smothered with jasmine, bougainvillea and plumbago” 118 BathLife 120-121.Travel.BL111.indd 1 25/7/08 12:20:31 GREAT ESCAPES TravelFile The 17th-century Palazzo was once the hunting lodge of Spanish and Italian kings We travelled with CV Travel to The Palazzo Belmonte. A week’s stay for two costs from £630 per person, including breakfast How did we get there? We flew to Rome from Bristol airport and drove down to Santa Maria large family groups with melodramatic toddlers. (around three hours). Pre-book parking at Bristol to save around 47% At a floodlit football match on the public beach, the crowd was only marginally less hysterical First impressions: The hotel is set in the middle than the febrile groups clustered around TVs of the lively, unspoiled little town of Santa Maria. Tall ancient walls enclose lush sub-tropical in Positana the next night, when Italy trounced gardens, and the mellow honey-coloured 17th- France 2-0 in Euro 2008. century palazzo, its inner courtyards leading up to Guidebooks will try to persuade you that secretive apartments the Amalfi coast is a one-and-a-half hour’s What are the rooms like? Cool, elegant and drive away. No, it’s not, not unless you have the luxurious. Ours had two adjoining rooms, a tracking skills of a Sioux scout; you need to build bathroom with a huge jacuzzi, and a pair of tall in at least another hour for getting thoroughly French windows overlooking the beach in one direction and Capri in the other. Just lovely. lost, not to mention unexpected road works in Salerno. What’s the food like? Wonderful; out of high season, a great local chef cooks up authentic It’s well worth making the journey, though cuisine; in high season they bring in a top chef. especially if you’ve never visited this implausibly picturesque region, with its tiny towns clinging What else can I do? Visit: Paestum, Pompeii, or take a trip to the Amalfi coast; spend a day in to vertiginous cliffs. Be warned: Positano has anarchic, fascinating Naples; go for lunch in the become a pricey, overcrowded tourist trap pretty little mediaeval town of Castellabate, just up (Steinbeck has a lot to answer for), and to see it the hill from the Palazzo. But allow plenty of time at its best you should probably go in the evening, to relax on the beach – the sea and sand is some of the best you’ll ever come across. when most of the tourist buses have departed. We were suitably enchanted, but were happy Our verdict: It’s hard to convey just how special CV Travel offers holidays in villas, historic to make the trip back to tranquil Santa Maria. this place is. It’s the Prince’s ancestral home, houses and country estates throughout Italy and it feels a privilege to be able to share it. The tel: 020 7401 1039 Cilento may not have the drama and glamour of Palazzo offers a great balance between utter www.cvtravel.co.uk Amalfi, but for now, at least, it remains a wholly tranquil luxury, and the charm and fun of being www.palazzobelmonte.com authentic corner of the Italian coastline; enjoy next to a bustling little Italian town. www.bristolairport.co.uk its peaceful unspoilt beauty while you can. m BathLife 121 120-121.Travel.BL111.indd 2 25/7/08 12:21:27.

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