Where to Find an Affordable Slice of Italy’s Most Dramatic Coast

Monday, Sept. 1, 2008

Read more about Italy in International Living Postcards—your daily escape

Dear International Living Reader,

Italy’s Campania region takes in Sorrento and the Amalfi’s show-stopper coastline of tortuous bends and cliff-top villages. Naples, Mount Vesuvius, and the ruins of Pompeii, too.

Off its coast shimmers the Isle of Capri, where average square-meter prices are around $16,000. Prices along the Amalfi coast aren’t that far behind.

If you ask a U.S. or U.K. property finder about Campania holiday homes for less than $250,000, they’ll probably gurgle like drains. (Instruct a travel agent to find you a three-star hotel beside a beach for less than $100 (a night) in summertime, and you can expect the same reaction.)

So why explore Campania?

Simple. It’s because you can find good-value hotels and affordable holiday properties here. By affordable, I mean small villettas with gardens starting at $152,000.

Venture inland and you can pick up homes in delicious hill towns for well under $60,000. Lots of homes, lots of hill towns. And two-story modern villas with a couple of acres of land in the countryside for $125,000 (or less).

But you have to target the right areas. And that means exploring corners where few foreign tourists go. So for starters, forget Capri, Amalfi, and Sorrento.

Instead, continue south and seek out towns and villages that you’ve never heard of. Places where you can gorge on $6 pizzas...plates of homemade spaghetti stuffed with clams and zucchini flowers for $10...half-liter carafes of local wine for $6.50 or less. In one osteria, my jug of nectar was a mere $2.50.

Full details about Campania’s property bargains will be in my upcoming print issue article. Yesterday I visited Scario on the Gulf of Policastro—a gorgeous village with a church, stepped alleyways, and a little harbor.

Scario itself is pricy: $146,000 for a teeny 322-square-foot apartment. However, it has an agent, Enzo Carro, who presented me with three more affordable solutions. They were in the nearby villages of Bussento and Strazzari—both inside Cilento National Park.

My favorite was in Strazzari: a €120,000 ($174,000) 752-square-foot villetta with two bedrooms, a portico, and flowery garden.

My coastal base for this section of the trip is Villammare’s Hotel La Perla. In June (a good time to come if you’re not keen on blistering heat), it’s €60 ($87) nightly for doubles. Breakfasting on its terrace overlooking the glitteringly blue Mediterranean is pretty special.

The rate also includes spiaggia servizi: two sunbeds and a beach umbrella on the hotel’s shingle/pebble beach. Me, do sunbathing? Well, if the sunbed is for free...

Steenie Harvey
Roving Europe Editor, International Living

Editor’s Note: Watch out for Steenie’s full coverage of Campania in the upcoming issues of International Living magazine. She will cover topics of affordable, luxury, and rural homes as well as how the superstitious locals deal with being stricken by malocchio (the evil eye). If you are not a subscriber, you can sign up here.

Read related IL Postcards:

- Secret Passages, Donkey Feasts, and Homes for $15,500

- Baroque Bargains in Italy’s Heel

- An Italy You Can Afford