June 2006

Ahead of us, out of the heat haze, an island appears. It is Ponza, a blue iceberg melting in a millpond sea. There is not a breath of wind. The flag at our masthead is hanging as limp as a butcher's pheasant. The temperature is in the high 30°Cs and rising, and I am standing on the Burmese-teak deck of the Royal Clipper, the world's largest square-rigged sailing ship.

On closer inspection Ponza resembles the bleached, bony carcass of some ancient sea monster, riddled with grottoes, bristling with tusk-like rock stacks. Under its tall cliffs there are bathing beaches, most of them seemingly inaccessible except by boat; and as we draw closer to its pastel-coloured houses I can see a lighthouse, a cemetery and a tower (now a hotel, the Torre dei Borboni) above the harbour. And already, even before we have dropped anchor in the bay, we have become an object of excitement, to be met and encircled by flotillas of speedboats.

Forget ferry timetables and hotel bookings: cruising with the Royal Clipper is by far the best way to see the Tyrrhenian coast and islands. Not only is it hassle-free, it is also the loveliest of soft adventures. Once you have sailed on her, cleaving the water at 18 knots or more, you will come to regard most conventional cruise ships as mere floating condominiums.

With her five lofty masts and sleek blue-and-white hull, the Royal Clipper is a dream from another age. Introduced into service in July 2000, she is the first five-masted, square-sailed, full-rigged sailing ship to be built since the legendary Preussen was launched in Hamburg in 1902.

But there the similarity ends. While the Preussen was designed to carry cargo, the Royal Clipper was built purely for cruising, pampering her passengers with all manner of comforts unknown to the old mast-and-yards men and their hard-driving captains as they weathered Cape Horn or raced home from China with holds full of tea.

Below decks, surrounded by polished mahogany, gleaming brass and acres of royal-blue carpet, you might imagine yourself to be in some glitzy hotel. But first and foremost this is a sailing ship and Captain Klaus Muller, her Master, shakes out her 56,000sq ft of canvas sails whenever there is enough wind. She is, quite simply, the most beautiful creation of our time: a maritime Concorde, flying under canvas on an odyssey that takes you back to the mid-19th century when working clippers, those greyhounds of the sea, made their epic voyages around the world.

Ponza is the largest island in the Pontine archipelago. Together with Palmarola, Zannone, Ventotene and Santo Stefano, it lies some 20 miles off the coast of Latium; most of its visitors – overwhelmingly Italian – arrive on the Naples car ferry. The port has a faded, laid-back charm, with plenty of restaurants tucked among the surrounding steps and passageways, of which the Aquapazza, Scoglieri and Il Pescatore are the best. But an afternoon ashore in the 36°C heat made me appreciate the Royal Clipper's air-conditioned coolness on my return.

The masthead flag still hung lifeless, but a stiff breeze came whistling over the water just as it was time for us to leave. Whenever the Royal Clipper weighs anchor, Vangelis's theme music from the Christopher Colombus movie, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, is relayed over the ship's sound system. Corny as it may be, but it is an act of pure theatre in which every passenger becomes a walk-on player and it made my spine tingle with pride to be a part of it, as we bore south to Sorrento with all 42 sails set, from our flying jib to our cross-jack and spanker.

Nor was Vangelis the only music on deck. Every afternoon in the last dog-watch, Captain Klaus would emerge on the fo'c'sle and play his bagpipes. In 1964, aged 29, he was given his first command as captain of a coaster sailing regularly to North Africa out of Glasgow. He has lived in Scotland ever since – hence his fondness for the pipes. 'I never dreamed then,' he said, 'that one day I would be captain of the first five-masted square-rigger to be built since the Preussen.'

The wind must have died some time in the night, for early morning found us motoring under bare poles, the mighty outline of Vesuvius scarcely visible in the haze. Soon, Sorrento revealed itself: a frieze of palms, umbrella pines and grand if somewhat old-fashioned hotels, such as the imposing Excelsior Vittoria, one-time home of famed tenor Enrico Caruso, teetering on a sombre wall of sheer cliffs.

From Sorrento's Marina Piccola I took a €3 bus-ride up the steep, winding road to the piazza Tasso in the town centre. The main street, the corso Italia, was heaving with visitors and the via San Cesareo, a narrow souk walled in between endless displays of holiday souvenirs, busier still. Goethe, Casanova, Keats, Lord Byron – all were drawn here in the past by the indolent charm of the Sorrentine peninsula. What would they have made of it now, I wondered?

Later, waiting for the Ship's launch to take me back to the Royal Clipper, I watched an old boat being repaired on a strip of grey sand under the cliffs. The hull had been stripped down to its ribs, and behind it rose a typically Mediterranean tall building with faded ochre walls. Only here did I glimpse the ghost of Sorrento as it might have been a century ago.

In mid-afternoon we set sail again, and two hours later dropped anchor off Capri, just as the last of the ferries was leaving. It was a perfect time to arrive, on a golden mid-summer evening when all the day-trippers had returned to the mainland and the island belonged to itself again.

Having disembarked as the Marina Grande, I walked across the quay and rode the funicular through hanging gardens of figs and lemons to Capri town. At its heart lies the Piazzetta, an operatic stage set enclosed on three sides by cafés and overlooked on one corner by the picture-book campanile of Santo Stefano church.

From the town's terrace, just a few steps away, I could see the Royal Clipper anchored in the bay below and, on either side, the steep folds and limestone flanks of Monte Solaro and Monte Tiberio falling into the sea.

It was from the Villa Jovis on Monte Tiberio that the Emperor Tiberius once ruled the entire Roman world; today, for all its cosmopolitan nature, Capri remains a patrician retreat for the seriously rich, its exclusivity maintained by its island status, one step removed from the mainland world of lesser mortals. In Capri town, money talks. the maze of narrow, traffic-free streets behind the Piazzetta is thronged with boutiques whose names – Gucci, Prada, Fendi, Versace – read like a litany of conspicuous consumption. And yet you can still eat well and inexpensively, as I did at La Capannina, a cheerful back-street trattoria in the via Le Botteghe, decorated with photos of the film stars, footballers and pop idols who have also dined there over the years.

At midnight we set sail for Amalfi, and by breakfast-time the following morning had anchored in the shadow of its mountainous coastline. A thousand years ago, the maritime republic of Amalfi rivalled even the power of Pisa and Genoa, and it was here that one of Europe's first compasses was made, the technology having been brought back from the Middle East.

Land in Amalfi is at such a premium that its main shopping street, the via Genova, is built over an old riverbed, with houses rising all around, one above the other as if glued to the mountain-sides like swallows' nests, separated only by salitas, cascades of steps, and painted in vibrant Mediterranean colours.

At the heart of it all, best approached through the archway of the porta della Marina, is the piazza Duomo and its ninth-century cathedral. the Pizzeria San Andrea in a corner of the square is a good place for lunching and people-watching. but first, a coach was waiting to take us on a half-day excursion up the dragon gorge, vallata del Dragone, to Ravello on a road as tortuous as a sheep's intestine, squeezing past oncoming traffic with scarcely a lick of paint between us as we swung round each dizzy hairpin bend. Ravello and Amalfi are only five kilometres apart but the journey can take 90 minutes if, like us, you get stuck in a traffic jam.

The reward is to emerge in Ravello's main square, the piazza Vescovado, high above the sea with café awnings and umbrella pines and sweeping views across the valley to Scala (whose name means steps), the oldest town on the Amalfi coast.

Dominating the square is Ravello's 11th-century Duomo, a beautiful, austere cathedral dedicated to San Pantaleone, with Roman pillars and an oddly sloping nave, so that you actually have to walk uphill to approach the altar. Its greatest glories are two marble pulpits, one carried on the backs of six stone lions, the other decorated with a mosaic of jonah and the whale.

Accompanying us was Lello Brandi, a loquacious guide who explained how everyday life on this near-sheer coast involves interminable uphill and downhill journeys. 'In Hollywood movies,' he said, 'the mailman has a bicycle and a big smile. He whistles as he delivers his papers and greets everyone he meets. "Hi Tom, hi Charlie." But not in Amalfi or Ravello. For a start, he has no bicycle. Instead he must walk every day up hundreds of steps. So that when at last he gets to the door he has not the strength to whistle, let alone "Hi Tom, hi Charlie." All he can do is gasp for breath.'

Across the square an avenue of mossy lime trees lead down to the gardens of the Villa Rufolo, a haven of flowering terraces and goldfinch song and incomparable views, the sea glittering like crushed diamonds and a backdrop of blue mountains leached of all substance by the heat haze. Every summer this is the setting for the concerts of classical music which have been one of the cultural highlights of the Amalfi coast since Wagner came here by donkey in the late 19th century.

Early the following morning found us slipping through the Straits of Messina with Sicily off our starboard bow, the toe of Italy on the port side and a US Navy aircraft carrier guarding the northern approaches.

Even at this hour Sicily lay baking under a relentless sun, its furrowed mountains as burnt and bare as the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, of which they are an extension, and its rocky capes crowned with improbable castles and monasteries.

Ahead loomed the great cone of Mount Etna, announcing our imminent arrival at Taormina, where we anchored in the bay. An hour later and the first tenders were heading ashore to deposit sightseers on the harbourside at Giardini Naxos.

A day in Taormina, exploring the Greco-Roman theatre and the Corso Umberto, was not enough to do justice to Sicily's main tourist destination. So with what time remained I cast around for somewhere to stay on a return visit. Top of the list by a mile was the San Domenico Palace Hotel. The original 15th-century monastery became a hotel in 1896. Now, palm trees and bougainvillea-blossom grace its quiet cloisters, and what were once monastic cells have become small but elegant bedrooms, most with stunning views over the hotel gardens to the sea below.

Our last port of call was Lipari, one of the Aeolian Islands off the north coast of Sicily, and this was the one I enjoyed the most, not only for its sense of off-beat remoteness, but also for the stark beauty of its volcanic coastline.

Lipari's 16th-century fort walls, I discovered, enclose one of Italy's finest archaeological museums, the Museo Eoliano. Built on the site of the former acropolis it contains an outstanding collection of Greek and Roman treasures, including earthernware masks and magnificent vases painted with mythological motifs of gods and warriors, ancient Greek warships and scenes of Dionysian debauchery.

Later I joined the Royal Clipper's round-the-island excursion, whose first stop was the Belvedere dei Quattrocchi, a favourite viewpoint 10 minutes' drive out of the town, with stupendous cliffs of prickly-pear trees and pumice falling away into the sea; and further off, beyond a range of stacks and rock arches, the neighbouring island of Vulcano.

We drove on towards the village of Quattropiani, through vineyards which produce Lipari's unique malvasia wines, and more islands came into view. First, the twin volcanic summits of Salina, then the hazy silhouette of Panarea and finally, more faintly still, the smoking pyramid of Stromboli.

Still hugging the coast, we dropped into the little port of Acquacalda, where pumice stone is quarried out of the mountainsides and exported all over the world, and then past the obsidian sands of the Lunga Mare, the island's longest beach at Canneto, where Roberto Rossellini filmed Stroboli with Ingrid Bergman in 1950 and put Lipari on the tourist map.

It was only on leaving Lipari that I learned why this volcanic archipelago was once called the Islands of the Winds. All day thunder had rumbled in the hills. Although the sea was strangely calm as we hoisted sail and bore away towards Salina, I noticed a dark curtain of rain advancing towards us. In minutes we were struck by a 35-knot squall of gasping force that blew out four staysails and tore our jibs to shreds. Through it all the ship remained on a fairly even keel and within 10 minutes the wind had raced on and we were sailing again in bright sunshine.

Now only one last great set-piece remained before we returned to Civitavecchia, from where we had set off a week before. With impeccable planning our cruising itinerary had been arranged so that we should pass Stromboli at night,, just after dinner. We came on deck and there it was, huge and mysterious and forbidding, rising steeply from the waves with intense orange eruptions of molten lava streaming down its flanks.

All week long, wherever we had anchored, the Royal Clipper had stolen the show. With her graceful lines and clouds of sail she could not fail to draw the eye, up-staging even the most beautiful surroundings. But for once, heaved-to beneath Stromboli's awesome shadow, even the world's largest tall ship was upstaged by this apocalyptic display of natural pyrotechnics.