Monastero Santa Rosa was a convent before it was a hotel. Sister Rosa Pandolfi, of a noble family from Scala, paid for it beside the old church of Santa Maria di Grado, and it was finished in 1681 and dedicated to St Rose of Lima. Its nuns kept an apothecary, funded an aqueduct for the village and, by local tradition, created the sfogliatella Santa Rosa in their refectory: a shell of pastry filled with semolina and ricotta and topped with pastry cream and black cherries. A Roman hotelier bought it in 1924 and made it a hotel; it later stood empty until a new owner bought it in 2000 and spent about a decade restoring it. It reopened in 2012 with 20 rooms and suites.
The rooms are made from the nuns' former rooms and common areas, linked together under their vaulted ceilings over two levels, each named after a herb from the garden, with Jerusalem stone bathrooms and heated floors. The Superior Rooms are 26 m² with a sea-view window and a walk-in shower; the Deluxe Rooms, 26 to 28 m², add a bathtub and a bathroom window on the sea. The Queen Terrace Rooms on the top floor are 22 m² with an 8 m² terrace. The eight suites differ one from the next, from the 34 to 44 m² Deluxe Suites to the 75 m² Premium Terrace Suite with a 49 m² terrace and the 130 m² Rosa Suite on two levels.
It is chosen for the table. Il Refettorio holds a MICHELIN star, which it has kept since 2017, and the MICHELIN Guide also gives the hotel a Key. Chef Alfonso Crescenzo cooks Campanian produce, much of it from his family's organic farm, as two tasting menus and an à la carte, served on a terrace that hangs over the gardens, the pool and the Gulf of Salerno. Dinner ends, fittingly, with the sfogliatella Santa Rosa reworked. Below the terrace, four levels of gardens step down to a heated freshwater infinity pool cut into the cliff, and the thermal suite, set in the old vaulted rooms, is included in the room rate.
The trade is the price and the cliff. From mid-May to early October the entry room costs about €1,320 a night, and it is the plainest way in, with one window and a shower. There is no beach: the sea means the pool, or steps down to Marina di Conca and a steep climb back, and the gardens themselves are all steps. Book it for dinner on the terrace and the pool, take a room with a terrace, and use the free shuttle to Amalfi for the rest of the coast.
