THE LEGENDARY AMALFI COAST HOTELS THAT ARE WORTH THE JOURNEY ON THEIR OWN

Some hotels are places where you sleep. Others are the reason for the journey. These last ones keep the secret of this coast.

There are hotels that are only that, hotels. And there are a few, clinging to the cliffs between Positano and Capri, that have become part of the legend of the coast. You do not go to them to sleep. You go to them to belong, for a few days, to a certain world. This is a map of the ones that define the region.

Le Sirenuse, Positano. The most photographed terracotta façade in Italy was once the summer home of the aristocratic Sersale family, who opened it to the world in 1951. At dinner, the restaurant La Sponda is lit by hundreds of candles, one for every summer night the coast promises. It is the hotel you see from any boat passing off Positano, and the one that best captures that warm pink that set the tone for the collection.

Il San Pietro di Positano. It has no sign on the road. Those who do not know pass it by. Carved into the rock above the bay of Laurito, entirely covered in bougainvillea, the San Pietro guards a private beach reached by a lift cut into the cliff. It was here that Marcello Mastroianni took refuge with Catherine Deneuve. It is the luxury that does not announce itself, the same as a piece only those who know recognise.

Caruso and Palazzo Avino, Ravello. High in Ravello, far from the bustle, stand two palaces. The Caruso, an eleventh-century palazzo whose infinity pool seems to spill into the Golfo di Salerno. And the Palazzo Avino, the pink palace, a twelfth-century villa from which you see the whole coast. It is this Ravello, suspended between the sky and the water, that gave its name to the collection's swimsuit and where Jackie Kennedy spent the summer of 1962.

Punta Tragara, Capri. The red villa that Le Corbusier designed above the Faraglioni served as Allied headquarters during the war before becoming one of the most elegant hotels on the island. From its terrace, the three rocks seem within reach of the hand. It is glamour with a view, the same that inspired the name we almost gave to one of the pieces.

Villa Treville, Positano. It was the home of Franco Zeffirelli, and through it passed Maria Callas, Leonard Bernstein and Elizabeth Taylor. Open today to a select few, it keeps the atmosphere of a private villa where Italian cinema and music once crossed paths at sunset.

You do not have to stay in any of them to let them into the journey. A lunch is enough, an aperitivo, a late afternoon. And the right piece for the moment: a swimsuit that carries you from the pool to the bar without a change, a necklace that looks right against the skin after a swim. These hotels teach something the brand believes too: that true luxury is discreet, and that it is always recognised, even when it does not announce itself.Sofia Godinho