AD Revisits: Gore Vidal's Amalfi Coast Villa
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Built into a cliff face some 1,000 feet above the Gulf of Salerno, the Mediterranean-style villa, seen from its western side, has arched windows and a minaret-like tiled chimney.
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After decades of dividing his time between Rome and Ravello, Gore Vidal has moved permanently into La Rondinaia, his villa in Ravello. From a terrace on one of the villa’s five levels, the view encompasses a new larger terrace and observation post on the second level, and a hillside of terraced gardens that descends to the Amalfi Coast.
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“All my books from Burr on were written longhand in this room at this table,” says the author. His studio epitomizes the merging of two households; pieces bought 30 years ago for Rome have found a place in Ravello. “I’ve been loyal to my furniture.”
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A Neapolitan bed frame, an 18th-century Austrian writing table, and a Don Bachardy drawing of Vidal near other family portraits and mementos are in the bedroom of Vidal’s companion, Howard Austen.
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Among the author’s family photographs is one of his father, Eugene Vidal, standing between Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Wallace. As a child, Gore Vidal was photographed with his blind grandfather, Senator Thomas Pryor Gore of Oklahoma.
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The ornate dining chairs with ram’s heads “were made at Cinecittà studios for Ben-Hur when I was writing the film,” Vidal says. A 19th-century gilt-framed mirror in the dining room hangs above a circa 1810-Neapolitan gilt-wood sideboard.
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A pair of church candlesticks frame the archway of the barrel-vaulted small salon, where an 18th-century Aubusson tapestry, two capriccios of Rome, a work by Parmeo, and Burmese wood panels are displayed.
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The furniture in Vidal’s bedroom “was made in 1840 for an old girl in Poughkeepsie, New York,” he says. “I purchased it from her family in 1950. I’ve slept in the same bed now for almost 50 years.”
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A lavender-lined path leads to the swimming pool, which is shaded by cypress trees and overlooks the Lattari Mountains. The pool had to be dug by hand, since there are no roads to the property; its color was intended to approximate the Blue Grotto on nearby Capri.