Palazzo Murat wedding

Palazzo Murat stands on the ruins of the church of San Vito, the town’s old protector, and of the Benedictine abbey beneath it, and under both lies the Roman layer that Vesuvius buried in 79 AD. The painted rooms of Positano’s Roman villa are open today, in the museum under Santa Maria Assunta next door.

The palace carries the name of Joachim Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law and King of Naples from 1808, who is said to have stayed there.

Its modern story begins with Alfonso Cinque, a Positano man who made a fortune in New York as a wholesaler, came home, bought the ground floor and turned the farmland beside it into a garden of vines, vegetables and olive trees. After his death his children bought the rest of the building floor by floor, and in the 1960s it became the Hotel Palazzo Murat. The family’s fifth generation runs it now.

One of Alfonso’s sons was Carlino Cinque, who ran the family’s Miramare from the 1930s and later built Il San Pietro di Positano on the headland at Laurito.

The palace is a set of spaces around one garden, and a wedding that takes the whole hotel has all of them.

Palms, citrus trees and centuries-old bougainvillea around the palace, with the hotel’s restaurant, Al Palazzo, set in the middle of it. It is the setting for the ceremony and, with the hotel taken whole, for the dinner under the palms.

The palace’s courtyard, framed by citrus trees in the shade of a great silk floss tree, where breakfast is served every morning and the hotel’s cocktail bar, Le Petit Murat, runs until midnight. For a wedding it is the aperitif, or the dinner itself for up to 80.

The hotel’s pool lies between the botanical garden and the dome of Santa Maria Assunta, and it is kept for the hotel’s own guests. With the whole hotel taken, that is every guest, and it becomes the welcome drinks and the long lunch the day after.

Thirty-four rooms and suites, and the hotel sleeps about 76. A wedding with the whole hotel takes all of them, for three nights at least.

The Presidential Suite has two bedrooms, a sleeping floor above them and a large terrace over the sea, the village and the gardens. Two more suites and six deluxe rooms fill the rest of the historic palace, and the deluxe rooms, on the second floor, have no lift.

The newer wing holds seventeen special superior rooms, each with a terrace over the gardens and a side view of the sea, and eight garden-view rooms on the ground floor, opening straight onto the garden.

We give the historic suites to the couple and the families, and the garden rooms to anyone who would rather not climb.

Palazzo Murat is on Via dei Mulini, in the pedestrian centre of Positano, on the lane that runs down to the Spiaggia Grande. Santa Maria Assunta is next door and the beach a few steps below.

Cars stop above the centre, and the hotel keeps its own parking on Piazza dei Mulini, which in Positano’s pedestrian heart is rare. Its porters carry the luggage from the car park at any hour, free of charge.

Naples Capodichino is the airport, an hour and a quarter by road on a clear day and closer to two in July and August. Salerno’s airport looks nearer on a map, but the way there runs the length of the coast road, which is the slow part. For American guests, connecting through Rome or Milan into Naples beats the four-hour drive from Rome Fiumicino.

Napoli Centrale is an hour and five by road, and the high-speed trains from Rome and Milan arrive there.

Positano’s pier is at the foot of the Spiaggia Grande, a few minutes’ walk from the hotel, and the ferries and private boats from Naples, Sorrento, Capri and Amalfi land there, which makes the sea the easy way in.

For a wedding, Palazzo Murat is taken whole: all 34 rooms for three nights at least, at around €270,000, with VAT, the city tax and service included.

• All 34 rooms and suites, for three nights at least, with breakfast in the courtyard
• The wedding’s food and drink, priced on top of the rooms
• Parking on Piazza dei Mulini, by the day

The ceremony, the flowers, the music, the photographer, the hair and make-up and the transfers from Naples all sit outside the hotel, and so does the celebrant for a garden ceremony.

A Magic Day wedding at Palazzo Murat with the whole hotel starts at €450,000 and lands near €650,000.

A wedding in the middle of the town. At Palazzo Murat the wedding and Positano are the same place: the church next door, the beach below, the lanes all around. We plan the day to use that, with the ceremony at Santa Maria Assunta and the guests walking back through the town to the garden.

Keep the music soft, and move the loud part. The hotel sits among the town’s houses, so the courtyard is for acoustic music and conversation. A band belongs on a boat off the Spiaggia Grande or at a beach club, and we schedule the move for the moment the dinner ends.

Plan the arrival as a walk. Every guest and every delivery comes in on foot from the car park or the pier. We book the porters, time the suppliers’ deliveries for the early morning, and tell the guests to pack light.

Three nights is the minimum, so plan three days. The whole hotel for three nights holds the welcome evening, the wedding and the farewell, with the pool and the town in between.

Palazzo Murat gives a wedding a palace in the middle of Positano, a garden of palms and citrus, a courtyard, a pool and thirty-four rooms. What it does not give you is the wedding: the ceremony, the flowers, the music and the running of a weekend in a town where everything is carried in.

That is a planner’s work, and in the pedestrian heart of Positano, the logistics are most of it.

Magic Day plans weddings at Palazzo Murat from the first conversation to the final farewell.