Anantara Convento di Amalfi wedding

The convent was founded in 1212 on a shelf of the cliff just west of Amalfi, built into the rock above the harbour, and for centuries it was home to Capuchin friars. Their quarters are the hotel’s rooms now, with the tiled floors, the vaulted ceilings and the lime-washed walls they lived with.

It became a hotel, the Hotel dei Cappuccini, and in 1924, by the hotel’s own account, its kitchen invented cannelloni.

For much of the recent past it was the NH Collection Grand Hotel Convento di Amalfi, and in 2023 Minor Hotels reopened it as an Anantara after a long restoration.

It is the rare hotel here that stays open almost all year, from March to January, so a wedding at the Convento does not have to be squeezed into the summer.

The kitchen is led by chef Claudio Lanuto, who cooks the food of Campania at the Dei Cappuccini restaurant and much of it from the monks’ own garden. The hotel has its own beach, and a pool on the cliff edge.

Five spaces, each hired on its own, and none of them taking more than 60. The hotel asks that any ceremony space is booked with its wedding dinner or cocktail reception, so the day stays in the one building from the vows to the last drink.

The convent’s own chapel, consecrated, with terracotta floors, a marble altar and a great deal of natural light. It holds Catholic weddings for up to 60 on any day but Sunday, with the date and the documents arranged through the parish of Amalfi, and ceremonies begin from half past four or five, depending on the season.

The 13th-century cloister is the heart of the convent: an Arab-Norman quadriporticus of interlaced arches, open to the sky and to the sea beyond it. It holds a civil or a symbolic ceremony for up to 60, and a civil ceremony here is legally binding, with the paperwork done through Amalfi’s town hall.

The ceremony is in the open air, and if the weather turns it moves into the covered arcade around it, without leaving the cloister.

A terrace over the sea, for a ceremony of up to 50 or a cocktail hour for 60. It suits a wedding that wants the vows said in the open rather than under arches.

The path the friars walked along the cliff edge, under bougainvillea, with the sea on one side and the convent on the other, leading down to the pool and the Locanda. The wedding dinner is laid along it for up to 60, from half past seven until the midnight curfew, and the party stays there after it.

It is the part of the Convento we would build a wedding around. A long table on a cliff path, above the lights of Amalfi, is a dinner nobody at it forgets.

The hotel’s restaurant, under vaulted ceilings with tall windows over the coast, takes a wedding lunch for up to 30. For a smaller wedding it is an alternative to the evening on the Monk’s Walk, and for a larger one it is where the welcome lunch belongs.

Fifty-two rooms and suites, which is room for a wedding of sixty to sleep inside the convent. There is no buy-out: guests book at a group rate the hotel sets for the wedding, and it asks only for a small minimum of room nights, depending on the month.

The rooms were the friars’ cells, and they keep the tiled floors and vaulted ceilings, with the sea outside almost every window. The suites carry the convent’s history. The Suite del Priore looks over the cloister under preserved ceiling frescoes, the Dei Cappuccini suite is set in the old refectory with two balconies, and the Suite dell’Eremita, the hermit’s suite, sits high above the hotel with its own terrace and Jacuzzi.

That last one goes to the couple.

The rest we allocate with them by who needs to be where: the families near the cloister, and the friends who will be last off the Monk’s Walk nearest to it.

The Convento is on the cliff just west of Amalfi’s harbour, reached by lift from the road below, and ten minutes on foot from the cathedral in the Piazza del Duomo. That is its great practical advantage: it sits apart from the town and above it, and the town is still a short walk away.

Naples Capodichino is the airport, an hour and a quarter on a clear road and closer to two hours in July and August. Salerno’s airport is 40 minutes away. For American guests, connecting through Rome or Milan into Naples beats the four-hour drive from Rome Fiumicino.

For guests who would rather not take the road at all, the hotel arranges a helicopter from Naples airport that reaches Amalfi in fifteen minutes.

Salerno station is half an hour by road and Napoli Centrale an hour, and both take the high-speed trains from Rome and Milan.

Amalfi is a harbour town, and the sea is the easiest way in. Private boats run to Amalfi’s harbour from Naples in about two hours, and from Capri, Ischia, Positano, Sorrento and Salerno. For a wedding weekend, a boat to Capri on the Sunday is the day guests talk about for years.

The Convento is the one hotel on this stretch of coast where a wedding does not start by buying the building. Each space is hired on its own, the dinner is priced by the head, and the hotel asks only for a small minimum of room nights.

• A hire fee for each ceremony or dinner space, the chapel, the cloister, the terrace or the Monk’s Walk
• The wedding menu, from about €290 to €340 a head with the aperitif and the cake cutting included
• A drinks package on top, and an open bar after dinner if you want one
• The rooms, at the group rate it sets for the wedding

The flowers, the music, the photographer and the design all come from outside the hotel’s figures, along with the welcome dinner, the day after, and everything that happens in Amalfi rather than in the convent.

A Magic Day wedding at the Convento starts at €100,000, and for sixty guests we recommend €130,000. Ours here, for forty, came to €110,000 all-in.

Sixty is the number, whatever the space. The chapel, the cloister and the Monk’s Walk all stop there. We recommend the Convento for weddings of up to sixty and never try to stretch it, because the dinner along the cliff path is the whole point, and at sixty it is full.

Take the rest of the weekend into the town. With no buy-out, the Convento is the wedding and Amalfi is everything around it. At our own wedding here, the welcome dinner was at Donna Stella, a pizzeria in a lemon garden above the town, and on the Sunday the whole party took a boat to Capri and back. That boat is the decision we would repeat for any couple.

The timetable is fixed, so design to it. Ceremonies begin from half past four or five, the aperitif from half past five or six, dinner on the Monk’s Walk at half past seven, and the music ends at midnight. We schedule the whole day backwards from that last hour, so the evening never feels cut short.

An autumn wedding here is a real option. The hotel stays open until January, when most of the coast has shut, and October is warm and quiet. For a couple with a flexible date, it is worth a serious look.

A civil ceremony in the cloister counts. Few venues on this coast marry you legally on their own premises, and here you can, with the paperwork done through Amalfi’s town hall. For couples who want one ceremony rather than a town hall and a symbolic second, it settles the question.

The Convento gives you a chapel, a cloister, a cliff-edge path for dinner and a kitchen, and it lets you hire exactly the parts you need. What it leaves to you is everything else: the flowers, the music and the design inside the convent, and the whole of the weekend outside it.

That is where a planner earns their place. A wedding here is a small, fixed day inside the convent and a weekend in Amalfi around it, and the couples who enjoy it most are the ones whose welcome dinner and day on the water were planned as carefully as the vows.

Magic Day plans weddings at the Anantara Convento di Amalfi from the first conversation to the final farewell.