Sky and water hug the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast, Italy. Photograph © Jonathan Blair/CORBIS

Amalfi Coast
By Gore Vidal

Fifty-one years ago, just out of the army, I was looking for a place to write until at least the end of the century. I came to Ravello on a bright, cold day in March where I stood on a limestone cliff overlooking the Gulf of Salerno, Paestum opposite me, and I thought—and think—this is the most beautiful spot on Earth and so, in due course, I made it my own, and so it will remain until the next lucky visitor takes my place among the cypresses, the lemons, the vineyards of Magna Graecia where the sea-sky are so intensely blue that you cannot tell where one begins and the other leaves off.

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