Villa Rufolo

The gardens of Villa Rufolo, hanging high above the Amalfi Coast in Ravello, so struck Richard Wagner on his visit in 1880 that he took them as his model for Klingsor's magic garden in Parsifal. Today the terraces, with their sweeping views down to the Gulf of Salerno, are what most visitors come for, and they also serve as a setting for concerts of the Ravello Festival.

The villa itself dates from the thirteenth century, when the Rufolo family, wealthy merchants whose name Boccaccio borrowed for a story in the Decameron, built a residence that blends Arab-Norman and Gothic styles. Visitors walk through a cloister with intricate interlaced arches and can see the tall Torre Maggiore. The gardens owe much of their present form to Francis Neville Reid, a Scot who bought the estate in the nineteenth century and restored it.

The villa draws around 300,000 visitors a year and suits anyone interested in medieval architecture or gardens.