The Amalfi Coast is not a single place, and treating it as one is the first mistake most first-time visitors make. Positano is a vertical postcard best experienced on foot and briefly; Ravello sits four hundred metres above the sea and rewards a slower stay; Amalfi town itself is a working port with a good cathedral and a reliable ferry schedule. A week can hold all three without ever feeling rushed, provided the base is chosen with the right question in mind — do you want to walk out into the noise, or up into the quiet.
For most travellers, particularly those arriving from a busy fortnight elsewhere in Italy, Ravello is the better base. The town closes down by eleven. Villa Cimbrone and Villa Rufolo, the two gardens, are within a fifteen-minute walk of each other and reward an early-morning visit before the coach tours arrive from Sorrento around ten thirty. The concert season at Ravello Festival runs from late June through August and books out months ahead — a Wednesday evening in the Villa Rufolo garden with the orchestra facing the sea is one of the finer things Italy does, and worth building a trip around.
Positano is best done as an overnight rather than a week. The problem is not the town, which remains beautiful, but the logistics — every arrival by car requires a driver who knows the one-way system, and every departure involves either the ferry, which stops in bad weather, or the same drive in reverse. Two nights at the top of the town is enough to walk down through the bougainvillea, swim from Fornillo (quieter than the main Spiaggia Grande), have a long lunch at Da Vincenzo, and leave before the evening chokehold on Via Cristoforo Colombo begins.
For a properly serious sea-front stay, the honest answer is to leave the Amalfi Coast entirely and head across the peninsula to Portofino. Hotel Splendido sits above the harbour on a switchback road, and the terrace of the bar at seven in the evening is the reason people return year after year. The junior suites on the third floor with the harbour-facing balcony are worth the premium; the garden-facing rooms, while cheaper, sacrifice the view that is the entire point of being there.
On timing, mid-May through mid-June and the second half of September are the two windows worth flying for. The water is warm enough to swim from late May, the hydrangeas are still out in early June, and the crowds do not fully arrive until the last week of the month. August is impossible — hot, expensive, and full — and best avoided even by those with children on school holidays. October is a gamble; the light softens beautifully but the ferries reduce and the sea can turn.
One practical note that is rarely mentioned: the SITA bus that runs the coastal road between Sorrento and Amalfi is often more reliable than a private car in high season, because it has priority at the tighter passing points. A driver from the hotel remains the most comfortable option, but the bus is not the indignity it sounds like — a window seat on the sea side between Positano and Praiano is a small pleasure in itself.
Book restaurants before arriving. The good ones — La Sponda in Positano, Rossellinis in Ravello, the terrace at Le Sirenuse — are booked out a week ahead through July and August, and the reception desks at most hotels can secure a table only if given twenty-four hours' notice. A dinner at eight thirty in Ravello, walking back through the empty piazza afterwards, is what most people are actually looking for when they book this coast.