The catch at Hotel Marina Riviera

On Tuesday 8 June 2027 the Standard No View, about 16 m² on the top floor with two windows onto the back of the hotel and a walk-in shower, cost €614 a night for two with breakfast. The first room that looks at the sea, the Standard, is the same size with a sea-view window and a shower, and it was €917. A balcony starts with the Deluxe at €1,050. Breakfast came with every rate. On top of the room, the comune of Amalfi charges a tourist tax of €4 per person per night in four-star hotels from 1 April to 2 November, with children under 10 exempt. Rates are highest in May, June and September and lowest at the two ends of the season, in late March and late October.

The entrance opens straight onto Via Pantaleone Comite, the SS163 coast road, at the eastern edge of Amalfi's centre, and the sea-view rooms look across that road to the bay. It carries the SITA Sud buses, coaches and taxis that run the length of the coast, and daytime traffic noise in the rooms facing it is the complaint guests raise most often. They also find the windows and shutters keep most of it out, and that the higher the floor, the quieter the room. The same road is the reason the hotel works so well without a car: a taxi or transfer pulls up at the door, which is rare in Amalfi.

The lift is listed as running to the third floor only, with the two floors above it reached by stairs. Those top floors hold the heated pool and its sun terrace, the Standard No View rooms and the Master Suite, and the Suite Eolo is itself reached by steps. Amalfi adds its own climbs. The walk along the seafront to Piazza Duomo and the ferry pier is short but drops down a flight of steps by Marina Grande, and the Duomo itself stands at the top of a long staircase from the piazza. For anyone who manages stairs slowly, this decides the stay more than the view does.

Marina Grande, Amalfi's main beach, is about 4 minutes' walk away across the road. Like most beaches on this coast it is pebble, with paid beach clubs, where you hire a sunbed and an umbrella, beside free public stretches; the hotel puts beach towels and flip-flops in every room but has no beach club. Its own place to swim is the heated pool on the roof. Cars are harder still. The hotel offers no parking, says there is only a little in Amalfi and that traffic on the coast is very heavy, and asks guests to come by public transport, private transfer or ferry. Once you are here, everything in town is on foot.

Casa Marina Riviera is a restored house on Piazza del Duomo, about 240 metres from the hotel, and it sells three units under the hotel's name: the Dependance City View Room, 20 m² on the first floor over Piazzetta dei Dogi, which was €599 a night on the June date; the Suite del Duomo, 40 m² with a terrace on the cathedral square, at €903; and an Apartment with a kitchen, 60 m², at €1,080. The first two keep their original majolica floors and are handsome rooms, but they look over the piazza and its lanes, not the bay. Breakfast, the pool, the concierge and the bars are at the main hotel, a five-minute walk away, and the annex's guests can use them from April to October only.