It is Villa Treville, which is currently one of the best boutique hotels in the world. After buying it, Robert Friedland started managing it, and his son Govind Friedland, then husband of Alejandra Silva (41), now wife of Richard Gere (75) - recently awarded with the International Goya - and father of their only son, Albert.
Silva also worked as a manager at the hotel and was in the midst of a separation when she met the star of An Officer and a Gentleman, a friend of her husband's family for some time. There was something special between them that could materialize after the divorce. The actor was on vacation in Positano after finalizing his divorce from Carey Lowell.
The patriarch of the Friedland family is attributed a fortune of 3.000 billion dollars, mainly from the exploration and development of mineral and energy resources, as well as technological companies.
Villa Treville has a fascinating history. It was the residence of director Franco Zeffirelli from 1969 to 2007, who discovered the area while cycling in the 1940s. It would be decades before he became an international filmmaker, but he felt that place belonged to him in some way.
Originally, Villa Treville consisted of three buildings, Villa Bianca, Villa Azzurra, and Villa Rosa, which hosted the crème de la crème. Intimate friends like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton would frequently argue and reconcile there, Liza Minnelli would give intimate concerts, and Maria Callas would surprise guests with some of her arias. Everything that happened at Villa Treville was magical.
In short, an oasis of peace. Zeffirelli entrusted the interior decoration to his close friend Renzo Mongiardino, whose clientele included Jackie Kennedy, Marie-Helène de Rothschild, and Elsa Peretti, and who designed some of the filmmaker's movies like Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972), whose soundtrack Leonard Bernstein composed at Villa Treville. Anyone wishing to stay in this paradise should be prepared to pay a minimum of 1,500 euros, depending on the season.
Positano holds many secrets. For over three decades, the municipality was the retreat of writer and essayist Gore Vidal, who owned a beautiful estate called la Rondinaia. It was known as the mansion of orgies because its owner, besides being one of the most influential writers of the time, would host legendary parties that often ended in Roman bacchanals.
Some of the most important celebrities of the 20th century passed through there, such as Greta Garbo, Princess Margaret of England, Gianni Agnelli, Paul Newman, Leonard Bernstein, and Rudolf Nureyev, who would buy Gallo Lungo, one of the three dolphin-shaped islets belonging to Li Galli. By the way, Susan Sarandon became pregnant with her first daughter, Eva Amurri, during a stay at Gore Vidal's house, the result of her second marriage to Italian director Franco Amurri.
Gallo Lungo is located between Capri and Sorrento, where the Russian dancer used to swim naked in its waters, while from Villa Treville and La Rondinaia, some of their most illustrious guests would spy with binoculars on the antics of the eccentric former Kirov principal dancer.