Villa Rufolo was built in the thirteenth century for the Rufolo family, Ravello's merchant dynasty grown rich on trade with North Africa and the Levant, and its cloister and tower still mix Arab, Byzantine and Norman details in a way found almost nowhere else on the Amalfi Coast. By the nineteenth century the complex had fallen into decline until the Scottish botanist Francis Neville Reid bought it and laid out the terraced gardens that now step down toward the sea. Richard Wagner visited in May 1880 while composing Parsifal and reportedly found the garden he had been imagining for the opera's Klingsor already built, a connection the town celebrates still. That link led directly to the first Ravello Festival concerts, staged on the same terrace in 1953 and still running every summer, with the coastline and the Gulf of Salerno as a backdrop no concert hall can match.
A record of Ravello’s medieval merchant elite, nineteenth-century heritage restoration and the cultural origins of the Ravello Festival.
Sources and citations (4)
- Fondazione RavelloVilla RufoloVilla historyRead source
- Fondazione RavelloI giardini di Villa RufoloWagner and gardensRead source
- Fondazione RavelloIl FestivalFestival historyRead source
- UNESCO World Heritage CentreCostiera AmalfitanaProperty dataRead source
