Palazzo Murat is a historic palazzo on Via dei Mulini, the car-free lane that runs down through the middle of Positano to the church and the beach. It takes its name from Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law and King of Naples, to whom tradition gave it as a summer residence after 1808, though the owners say no one knows whether he ever stayed. The hotel tells it that the building stands on the ruins of the church of San Vito and a Benedictine abbey, beside the church whose crypts hold Positano's Roman villa. Alfonso Cinque, back from making his fortune in New York, bought the ground floor and turned the farmland beside it into a garden; his children Carlino and Carmela, with Carmela's husband Vito Attanasio, bought the rest, and in the sixties the house became a hotel. The Attanasio family still runs it, and it opens from late March to the end of October.
There are 33 rooms in eight categories, in the old palazzo and a newer wing. The entry Classic Garden and City View rooms, 24 to 30 m², are at garden level in the newer wing, with a private terrace over the garden and the village. The Special Superior rooms above them add a side view of the sea. In the palazzo, the Deluxe Sea View rooms have antique furniture and a balcony over the sea, and the Special Deluxe, the corner room the hotel calls the room of the King of Naples, has two French balconies. The suites run to a two-level Presidential Suite with a terrace of about 59 m².
It is chosen as the insider, and the garden is why. Behind the gate, on Positano's main pedestrian lane, are citrus trees, palms, a rose garden, succulents and bougainvillea over the arcades, in a garden begun as a vineyard in the fifties, turned into a citrus grove and kitchen garden by Carmela Attanasio and still supplying the kitchen. The pool sits among them with the majolica dome of Santa Maria Assunta and the sea beyond. Breakfast is served on the terrace of Le Petit Murat, the courtyard bar, and dinner at Al Palazzo, in the MICHELIN Guide, is laid out in the garden. The church is two minutes away on foot and Spiaggia Grande four.
The trade is the stairs and the view. There is no lift, so rooms in the palazzo are reached on foot, and the entry rooms look over the garden and the village rather than the sea, which starts a rung or two up at several hundred euros a night more. Book it to live inside Positano rather than look down on it, and take a Deluxe Sea View room.
