Amalfi & the Cilento: La Dolce Via

Arrive Naples, the city that invented pizza and doesn't much care what you think about it. A taxi to the Spaccanapoli district, the city's great spine, for a walk that is equal parts medieval church and anarchic street market. Dinner at a legendary Neapolitan pizza family — margherita, nothing else needed.

The transfer south on the Amalfi Drive is half the experience: corniche bends, citrus groves cascading over retaining walls, the sea appearing and disappearing. Positano tumbles down its cliff face in pink and ochre — we arrive by boat from Amalfi town, which is the correct way. Afternoon free to climb the lanes.

A private boat departs at 8am before the hydrofoils. Around the Faraglioni sea stacks — an arch you can sail through. The Blue Grotto if sea swell permits — lying flat in the dinghy as the tunnel opens into a cave of bioluminescent blue. Lunch on deck with Campanian white wine. Return to Positano by 5pm.

Morning: a family kitchen in Positano — learn to hand-roll pasta, the chemistry of limoncello, the technique of salt-curing anchovies. Lunch is what you've made. Afternoon drive to Ravello, perched 350 metres above the sea. The Villa Cimbrone gardens at dusk — the Terrace of Infinity, with a view that Virginia Woolf described as 'the most beautiful in the world'.

A final morning in Ravello — the Wagner Room at Villa Rufolo where the composer found inspiration for Parsifal, the rose garden in bloom. Drive south past Salerno into the Cilento, a landscape that has barely changed since the 8th century BC, when the Greeks first settled here.

Paestum at dawn: three Greek Doric temples rising from mist-wet grass, intact since 500 BC, with almost no one there. The museum holds the Tomb of the Diver — one of the most beautiful ancient frescoes in existence. Afternoon: a buffalo mozzarella farm where the cheesemaker pulls the cheese from hot whey in front of you, hands red, and hands you a warm sphere.

A final morning on the Cilento coast — the sand beaches that Amalfi tourists don't know exist. Transfer north to Naples for departures. A last espresso at a bar counter in Naples, standing up, as tradition demands. The ferry from Positano still seems like a dream.