Le Sirenuse began as the Sersale family's summer house. The Neapolitan family found Positano between the wars, and four siblings, Anna, Aldo, Paolo and Franco, came to live more at the villa than in Naples. In 1951 they opened the house as a small hotel, and John Steinbeck stayed soon after and wrote, in 1953, that Positano bites deep. The family still owns and runs it, and the hotel has grown around the old villa to 58 rooms and suites stacked up the hillside above the church of Santa Maria Assunta, open from late March to the end of October.
No two rooms are alike. The walls are white and repainted every winter, many ceilings are traditional cross vaults, and the antiques and Suzani rugs were collected by Franco Sersale. The ladder starts with the Courtyard Rooms, about 22 m² over an inner courtyard, and the Pool Terrace View rooms of 25 to 32 m², with a partial sea view. The sea-view rooms follow: Classic on the lower floors, Deluxe on the middle floors, Superior at about 30 m² with an 8 m² balcony, and Executive at 40 m². Junior suites of 43 and 49 m² and suites of up to 110 m² follow, the Junior Suite Superior and One Bedroom Suite on the highest floors. Every room has an espresso machine and a minibar of complimentary soft drinks.
It is chosen as Positano's icon for the things in the photographs. The terrace pool, among lemon trees and bougainvillea, was cut into the terrace in the 1970s and since 2024 has had a mosaic by the Swiss artist Nicolas Party on its floor, with the town and the sea beyond it. La Sponda, the dining room, is lit at night by hundreds of suspended candles that take an hour to light, with guitar and mandolin playing and the church dome close enough to touch. Franco's Bar, the open-air cocktail bar at the front, opens at 5pm and takes no reservations; Aldo's serves oysters and grilled fish on a terrace over the sea. The spa was designed by Gae Aulenti, with a sauna, a granite steam bath and an ice room, and the MICHELIN Guide gives the hotel a Key.
The trade is the price and the gradient. Positano is steps and steep lanes: Spiaggia Grande is 7 minutes down on foot and the ferry pier about 10, each a climb back, the hotel has no beach of its own, and children under 6 are not accepted. The Courtyard and Pool Terrace View rooms are sold only prepaid and non-refundable. Book it for the terrace, the candlelit dinner and a balcony over the town, and take the Superior Sea View.
