Amalfi Coast from Naples

Amalfi Coast tours from Naples: which towns each day trip stops in

The three trips below all take in Positano and Amalfi, and two of them add Ravello; they differ in how long you get in each town and in how they get you there.

The two with Ravello, a bus ride inland from Amalfi, come with someone to show you round. The four-town day, at €76.50, gives you an hour each in Sorrento, Positano, Amalfi and Ravello with an English-speaking tour leader; it leaves Piazza Garibaldi, opposite the central station, at 9:00, is back at 17:00 and can be cancelled up to 48 hours before. The small-group trip, at €98.10, keeps to 21 people with a guide in English or Spanish and gives Amalfi two hours. In summer it crosses from Positano to Amalfi by boat, and in winter it goes by road because of the sea. Neither trip includes entry to the villas.

There’s also a day by boat, at €84.60, sailing from Naples to Amalfi and Positano. It can’t be cancelled or changed, and rough seas can stop boats in winter, so from November to March one of the two road trips is the safer booking.

Naples to Amalfi and Positano by train, bus and boat

Without a tour, you take a train to one end of the coast and a bus or a boat from there, because no railway runs along it. Sorrento, at the western end, is the way in for Positano; Salerno, at the eastern end, is quicker for Amalfi, and its boats keep going all winter.

The season matters more than the route. From Sorrento, the boats along the coast stop at the start of November, so in winter it’s the bus. SITA’s winter timetable, from 2 November to 21 March, has about 18 buses a day from Amalfi to Sorrento from Monday to Saturday and 11 on Sundays. The last leaves Amalfi at 19:00 and reaches Sorrento at 20:40, in time for the last train to Naples at 22:00.

From Salerno, Travelmar sails all year, with ten boats a day to Amalfi on its timetable from 1 October, the first at 8:40, and the last back from Amalfi at 19:10. SITA also runs a direct bus from the port in Naples, at Varco Immacolatella, to Amalfi in about two hours, from Monday to Saturday, but the only buses back leave Amalfi at 5:45 and 6:20 in the morning, so it suits a one-way trip.

Buy SITA tickets before you board, at a tobacconist or in the UNICO Campania app, because tickets sold on board cost more. If you’ll hop from Sorrento to Positano, on to Amalfi and up to Ravello, the €10 day ticket covers all of it; it starts with your first ride and lasts 24 hours.

Positano: the church with the Byzantine icon, and the Roman villa beneath it

Coming from Sorrento, Positano is the first of the three towns, and the SITA buses stop there twice, at Sponda and at Chiesa Nuova. None of the Naples city passes covers anything on the coast, so every ticket here is paid separately.

The parish church of Santa Maria Assunta costs nothing to enter, and it keeps the Madonna di Positano, a Byzantine icon of the 13th century.

Under the church lies the MAR, the Museo Archeologico Romano: a Roman villa buried in AD 79, found in 2003 and opened in 2018. You see it on a guided visit in groups of seven, for €15 a person, and from 1 November to 30 March it opens from 10:00 to 16:00.

Amalfi: the cathedral of St Andrew, its cloister and the paper museum

Amalfi was the capital of a maritime republic, which UNESCO gives as the reason for the Arab-Norman influences along this coast. Its cathedral stands at the top of 62 steps and keeps the relics of St Andrew the apostle; it was begun in the 9th or 10th century, and the façade is from the 19th.

Beside the cathedral, the Chiostro del Paradiso, the Cloister of Paradise, was built in the middle of the 13th century by Bishop Augustariccio as a burial ground for Amalfi’s nobles.

One ticket of €3 (€1.50 reduced) covers the cloister, the Basilica of the Crucifix, the crypt and the diocesan museum, and the cathedral itself is free to enter during services. Its hours change with the season, so check them on the day.

The Museo della Carta, Amalfi’s paper museum, opens every day from 10:00 to 19:00, for €4.50 (children €3). With a guided visit in Italian or English it costs €7, and you wait 5 to 15 minutes for the next one to start.

Ravello: Villa Rufolo’s terraces and the Villa Cimbrone gardens

SITA bus 5110 runs up to Ravello from Amalfi every 20 to 40 minutes, and the small-group tour allows 40 minutes for the ride. Cars can’t drive into the town itself.

Villa Rufolo was built as a palace in the 13th century, in Moorish style, and remodelled in the 19th: you go in under its entrance tower, and the Torre Maggiore rises 30 metres. From 3 November it opens every day from 9:00 to 17:00, last entry 16:30, and tickets cost €8, or €6 for over-65s and children aged 5 to 12. They’re sold only at the villa, with no booking.

On the first Saturday of each month until March 2027, the ticket includes a guided visit, in English at 11:00 and in Italian at 10:00 and 12:00, for up to 30 people. Villa Cimbrone, the other garden in town, charges €10 and opens every day.