From the deck of the ferry the road disappears and the coast shows itself the way it was built to be seen, pastel towns stacked in the folds of the cliffs, lemon terraces cut into the rock, church domes glazed like tiles. Positano, Amalfi and Ravello share one UNESCO listing and one dramatic shoreline south of Naples, and the water is still the kindest way between them. The road is the other story, and it is governed by a calendar most visitors discover far too late.
Naples is the gateway, with the nearest big airport and rail links from Rome, and travellers from outside the European Union are now registered at the border with a photograph and fingerprints in place of a passport stamp, which slows a first arrival. The catch after that is space: the towns are small, vertical and hugely popular, so rooms for the warm months vanish while it is still winter. It is worth stopping to compare flights and hotels for the Amalfi Coast and settling your base early, because on this coast the room decides the trip more than almost anywhere else.
Each town keeps its own character. Positano is the showpiece, a stack of ochre and pink houses funnelling down to the beach. Amalfi, once a maritime republic, gathers around its striped cathedral and a busy little harbour. Ravello sits high above the water, all gardens and long views from Villa Rufolo and Villa Cimbrone, and reaching it means the road up from Amalfi rather than any boat, since it has no waterfront at all. Between the villages the Path of the Gods hangs along the clifftops, a proper hill walk that usually starts inland and finishes with a very long stair descent into Positano.
Where you base yourself shapes the whole stay. In Positano, cliffside boutique hotels climb above the Spiaggia Grande and its church of Santa Maria Assunta. In Amalfi town, family-run guesthouses hide in the lanes around the cathedral steps. Up in Ravello, historic villa hotels sit beside the Villa Rufolo gardens. Over the headland in Sorrento, mid-range hotels around Piazza Tasso offer easier connections and gentler prices for day trips along the coast. A visitor tax is added per person per night wherever you stay, settled at the property rather than shown in the price you compared online.
Now the calendar. The coastal road runs an alternating number-plate scheme: on odd calendar dates the plates ending in an odd digit may drive it, on even dates the even ones, from mid-morning to early evening. What almost nobody tells you is how uneven the season is. Around Easter and the spring holiday week it runs daily; through early summer it applies on weekends and public holidays only, so an ordinary June weekday is unrestricted; in late summer it runs every single day; and in autumn it falls back to weekends and holidays. A weekday in June and a Tuesday in September are entirely different propositions for a driver. The rule catches foreign and hired cars exactly as it does Italian ones, there is no alternative coastal road, and scooters and motorcycles sit outside it. Guests of registered accommodation can obtain a short temporary permit on production of the booking rather than a blanket exemption, each town keeps its own restricted zone on top, and this year brings staffed checkpoints managing the flow through the day. Check the published calendar for your dates before you book a car at all. Meanwhile the ferries between the towns are half the pleasure of the place and a pre-booked transfer from Naples airport spares you the first hard hour. You can check transfer and boat tour options and build the sea into the plan from the start.
Season decides how much of the coast is even running. Late spring and early autumn bring warm seas, working ferries and thinner crowds, and they are the months to aim for, with the caveat that the plate rule tightens sharply in the second half of that window. Through the winter many hotels, restaurants and boats simply close and the ferry network largely stops, leaving the bus and the road. Personally, I would go in the shoulder months and stay for the evening, because once the day boats leave, the lanes empty, the lights come on across the water, and the coast feels, briefly, like the fishing shore it used to be.
Q: How does the Amalfi Coast plate rule work?
A: On odd calendar dates the plates ending in an odd digit may use the coastal road, on even dates the even ones, from mid-morning to early evening. It applies to hired and foreign cars, and scooters and motorcycles are exempt.
Q: Does the plate rule apply every day in summer?
A: No, and this is where people get caught. Around Easter it runs daily, in early summer only on weekends and public holidays, in late summer every day, and in autumn on weekends and holidays again. Check the published calendar for your dates.
Q: Do you need a car on the Amalfi Coast?
A: It is far easier without one. The road is narrow, parking is scarce and expensive, the plate rule limits which days you can drive, and ferries and buses connect the main towns through the season.
Q: Can you reach Ravello by ferry?
A: No. Ravello sits high above the water with no waterfront, so you arrive by road from Amalfi. The ferries serve the shoreline towns only.
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