Il San Pietro di Positano

The hotel was created by Carlo "Carlino" Cinque (1911–1984).[1] Cinque had been in the hospitality business since 1934 when just 21 years old he rented a house in Positano to tourists with the hope of turning it into a hotel.[2] This business he developed into the Albergo Miramare. Positano at the time was still just a small fishing village that was gradually starting to attract the attention of tourists.

As the Miramare became established as one of the most popular hotels on the Amalfi Coast Cinque took to rowing his small fishing boat in the late afternoon to a headland two km south of Positano in the Laurito district that everybody knew as La Punta (The Point), where he dropped his lobster pots. It had a little beach, lush vegetation and the cliff here seemed to fall vertically from sky to sea. At the top was a small, white walled fisherman's chapel called San Pietro. Cinque fell in love with it and eventually resolved to buy the land from his brother in law, which he accomplished in 1962.[3][1] Overcoming the obstacles created by the logistical difficulties of elevation and excavation, Cinque eventually completed a small apartment and garden. Additional rooms and terraces were added. Little by little, the idea of transforming the craggy precipice into a hotel was born. He began cutting into the rock without disturbing the natural beauty of the surroundings.

Cinque would often take his boat out into the bay to determine how he needed to sculpture the cliff. Cinque undertook the roles of architect, construction engineer, site supervisor, and interior designer. The only advice he took was from an electrical engineer. Perhaps the most difficult aspect was the blasting that took place to install an elevator from the main lobby 88 metres (288 ft) down to connects to 22 m (75 ft) long horizontal tunnel out to a seaside sunbathing platform and bar. Finally after eight years of dynamiting and cutting the cliff apart he spent another three years constructing the buildings before opening the hotel on 29 June 1970 with 33 rooms.[4]

As Cinque wanted the interior to have minimal separation from the outside plants and flowers he drilled through walls, ceilings and floors and threaded vines and creepers through the openings, training them to grow from the outside.

As time went on he added more rooms and more gardens on nearly a dozen levels. There are those that face the sea while others provide views of Positano and the little village of Praiano several kilometres to the south.

Carlino Cinque died in 1984, with 2,000 people attending his funeral.[5] His niece Virginia Attanasio (1935 - ) and her brother Salvatore, took over ownership and management of the hotel.[5] Since the death of Salvatore in 1996 the hotel has been owned and managed by Virginia Attanasio and her two sons, Vito Cinque and Carlo Cinque.[5]

In 1989, the hotel joined the Relais et Chateaux hotel group.[6]

In 2002 the Zass restaurant (which was previously just called the "Restaurant at Il San Pietro") received a Michelin star.[3] [7] In the same year, the Spa, located in a former farm building, opened its doors.[3] In 2008 the Carlino restaurant (which is located at sea level and is open only to guests) was opened.[3] In 2016 the hotel completed a nine month long, a €3 million[8] construction of a new kitchen which required the extraction of a thousand cubic metres of rock under the supervision of kitchen designer Andrea Viacava and architect Fausta Gaetani. The kitchen which is spread over two levels covers 400 square metres and can produce up to 400 meals a day. It is equipped with an ozone treatment system which every day at 2am hermetically seals the kitchen and fills it with ozone which sanitizes the kitchen. At the time of its installation only two other restaurants in the world had a similar system.[9]

Among the hotels guests have been Giovanni Agnelli, Richard Burton, Claudette Colbert, Dustin Hoffman, Rudolf Nureyev, Gregory Peck, Liza Minnelli, Laurence Olivier, Anthony Quinn, who brought his family for an entire month, Tina Turner, Brooke Shields, Barbra Streisand, Julia Roberts, François Mitterrand and the King of Jordan.[10] Peter O'Toole spent a month at the hotel in 1975 with his then wife Sian Phillips recovering from surgery for pancreatitis, which removed his pancreas and a large portion of his stomach.[11]

The hotel was voted the 8th best hotel in Italy in the Readers' Choice Awards 2016.[12]

• Cervasio, Stella (June 13, 2015). "Compie 80 anni la signora dell'hotel San Pietro". Retrieved March 25, 2017.
• De Cesare Viola, Federico (August 25, 2016). "In Positano a new hi-tech kitchen dug deep in the rock to serve the international clientele of the San Pietro Hotel". Retrieved March 23, 2017.
• Fisher, Robert I.C (2011). Close to Paradise - The Gardens of Naples, Capri and the Amalfi Coast. London: Frances Lincoln. ISBN 978-0-7112-3038-5.
• Philips, Sian (2003). Public Places: My Life in the Theater, with Peter O'Toole and Beyond. New York: Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0571211289.
• Seligson, Hannah (October 14, 2016). "San Pietro di Positano Is the Most Exclusive Resort You've Never Heard Of". Town and Country. Retrieved March 29, 2017.
• Seligson, Hannah (December 23, 2017). "How the queen of Positano created one of the Med's best hotels". CNN. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
• Stern, Steven (2006). Stern's Guide to the Greatest Resorts of the World. Boca Raton: Stern's Travel Guides. ISBN 978-0977860807.
• "Zass". Via Michelin. Retrieved December 12, 2017.

• Attanasio, Virginia; Berbenni, Stefania (2011). The Dreamer from Positano - The story of il San Pietro, the most beautiful small hotel in the world. Boca Raton: Cinquesensi Editore, Lucca. ISBN 978-8897202097.

• Berger, Diane (1999). Rivera Style. London: Scriptum Editions. ISBN 1-90268601-2.

• Official Website