Capri & Amalfi UNDRESSED

Time is money. Capri and Amalfi spend both absurdly well.

- Text by SI SI PENALOZA

A boat glides through the Tyrrhenian Sea off Italy's Amalfi Coast

CAPRI

Capri doesn't merely welcome you, it remembers your flavor—like a lover who feasts on your rakishly disreputable indiscretions, keeping delicately ruinous confidences—and cellars the velvety vintage to pair with it.

This is more than a postcard paradise, it's a stage, and Capri never breaks character, even when you do. Arriving at Hotel La Palma —the island's oldest hotel built in 1822, reborn in 2025 as Oetker’s first Italian Masterpiece—feels like slipping into a heightened sensual parallel of your life. Everything slows, oddly familiar, like a song you never learned but somehow know by heart.

Far from the swirl of selfie sticks and day-trippers at Marina Grande, step inside to vaulted ceilings flickering with frescoes by Roberto Ruspoli, pale cabanas arranged like thrones around a pool—every line softened, every surface infused with designer Francis Sultana’s homage to 1950s Capri. La Palma’s managing director, Imelda Shllaku, tells us, “Our welcome is stylish but never stiff, relaxed yet refined, like the island itself. We want guests to feel instantly part of something timeless and a little theatrical—that’s the real spirit of Capri.”

La Palma’s rooms drip with gravitas, think old money and good taste with the sly confidence of an oligarch who's had both for centuries. Balconies scented by gardenia; dove-white walls interrupted only by flickers of turquoise and brass fittings. Bathrooms gleam in art-deco marble and chrome—a tactile caress against both fatigue and flashiness.