POSITANO

Positano is built on a slope so steep that it has almost no roads, only steps. Everything arrives on foot or on a scooter, and the town stacks up the cliff in tiers of pink, apricot and faded terracotta, each house looking over the roof of the one below.

The dome belongs to Santa Maria Assunta and is tiled in majolica — green, yellow and blue ceramic laid in a pattern that reads from the beach a hundred metres below. It is the one fixed point in a town where everything else is on a diagonal.

This is the Costiera Amalfitana, inscribed by UNESCO in 1997. Bougainvillea grows over every wall in a magenta that photographs badly and draws beautifully, which is why there is some on this towel and none of it is subtle.