Our Story
1916
In the early 1900s, Salvatore Rispoli and Carolina Pollio, young and in love, set off for the United States pursuing the American dream and leaving their small fishing village on the Amalfi coast that they loved so much. In New York they set up a grocery store that in time captures an exceptional clientele of movie and show business stars. But the homesickness is great. Here, then, they decide to return with two young children and a third on the way. It is 1916, the beginning of a myth more than a hundred years long, that of the Buca di Bacco that is intertwined with the rising star of Positano elected as a good retreat for foreign artists and intellectuals. Early earnings are made selling almond and black cherry syrups. Salvatore then decided to build a rooftop reservoir and cold room to offer coffee and lemon granitas, which soon became unique to the point of being enjoyed even by guests such as Grace Kelly.
“Mom was famous for frittura and parmigiana,” recounted Anna, one of the founding sisters of Buca di Bacco together with her five brothers, Giulio, the eldest, Giuseppe, Guido, Vito and Maria. It was the latter who was incessantly behind Anna and it was she later, together with her sister-in-law Lina, Giuseppe’s wife, who became the queen of the stove, mixing typical dishes with recipes suggested by guests.
The name Buca di Bacco was invented by Léonide Massine, the great Russian choreographer and dancer of the Ballets Russes. “He used to come to us,” Anna always recalled, “to have long drinks and play chess with Gilbert Clavel, who lived at the Tower he built in Fornillo in the early twentieth century. Together with journalist Italo Tavolato and painter Lubbers they baptized this place with the name Buca, which stands for cellar, and Bacchus in honor of the god of wine.”
In the years to follow, the Rispoli family expanded and took over a small property nearby and began the business of
inn and dancing in the evenings when the gramophone worked. “Those who had no money, such as the painter Grigory Oscheroff gave us paintings,” Anna recounted. “Our family was generous, and the very famous writer Essad Bei would have starved to death if my sister Maria had not brought him something to eat every day.”
With the arrival of World War II Buca di Bacco did not stop, and at its end came the turning point with the birth of the charming hotel that it is today thanks to the impetus of Julius and his wife Dorothea Flatow, who together with the work of all the brothers have made this place unique.
Among the big names who have passed through the doors of the Buca are General Clark, who imported the fashion of cocktails from the U.S., Norman Douglas, in straw hat and fan, the great fashion photographer John French, Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. But it does not end there are also the great names of Italian theater and cinema: Eduardo De Filippo, Vittorio De Sica, Totò, Franco Zeffirelli and many, many others.
In the 1990s it was then Sasà Rispoli’s turn to continue on this path with sisters Carla and Marianna. Today Buca di Bacco is a modern business with deep roots, attentive to the traditions of the past and innovation in service and capturing the interest of travelers from all over the world thanks to its unique location.
