Positano is a town of 4,000 people on the Amalfi Coast of Italy. Cut into a stepped cliff the shape of an amphitheatre and facing the Tyrrhenian sea, the town’s rows of weathered houses, outfitted with floor-to-ceiling arched windows and doors that look like the end goals of epic quests, rise almost vertically from the beach and the prominent majolica-domed cathedral. The cathedral and much of the lower town sit on

the remains of an ancient Roman settlement, and the improvisation of millennia has led to a labyrinth of crooked alleys and staircases connecting it all. Steep gardens burst with lemon trees and the occasional cypress, and the islands just off Positano’s coast even have their own purported place in Homer’s Odyssey. Positano is a place for dreams to run wild.