Like a giant glowing eyelid, a deep-orange awning filtered the sun. For hotel guests, memory, not possession, is nine points of the law. Recalling a light breeze scented by roses and spiced by a lone singer with a mandolin, I took back Persiana. Torre, the tower room at the top of the hotel, was Lynn's to reclaim. On cue the next day, a career chambermaid, still gracious and still sweeping out the room, remembered the bride.
Architecture is far from the hotel's only charm.
I had hiked out to the promontory occupied by the Villa Cimbrone before, but never with luggage in tow. But they were the ones to be pitied. We'd be locked inside. Beyond the gate, we passed stone boars poking out above a small cloister. A newish marble plaque affixed to an exterior wall marks the star's 1938 assignation here with conductor Leopold Stokowski.