A PRESTO, GIOVANNI!
08.10.2025 LE SIRENUSE
He’s not going far, grazie al cielo, so we hope to see plenty more of him in the years to come. Giovanni’s family own a small bed and breakfast in the rural village of Pogerola, above Amalfi. He’s promised to help them manage bookings and all the rest – providing they also let him enjoy his retirement and spend time with his grandchildren, Chicco and Giovanni (the latter is a name that has run in the family for generations).
It was on 4 February 2008 that Giovanni began a job that is rather like being the captain of a ship – when the ship is a hotel. You are both the warm public face and the efficient behind-the-scenes fixer, you are required to deal with present emergencies and head off future ones, meet and greet guests, suppliers and technicians, iron out staffing issues and write endless emails. Somehow, Giovanni has always managed to do all of these tasks and more with kindness, sensitivity and generosity, even when others were in a panic. ‘Unflappable’ is the word that comes to mind.
Born in the inland Campanian province of Avellino, Giovanni moved coastwards to attend hotel school in Salerno. His first work experiences brought him further west to the Amalfi Coast – and it was here that he met the woman who would become his wife. His first encounter with Le Sirenuse was as at a booking agent for five seasons at the end of the last millennium, following which he spent eight years managing Amalfi’s historic Hotel Luna Convento. When the Operations Manager vacancy came up in 2007, Le Sirenuse owner Antonio Sersale called Giovanni in for a chat. And another one. And another one. It was third time lucky.
Asked to name a highlight of his time at Le Sirenuse, Giovanni smiles and recounts: “It has to be the audience Pope Francis granted me and the other staff members in November 2013”. Six months earlier, when the hotel had just opened for the season and the Argentinian Jesuit cardinal was elected Pope, Giovanni had joked with his colleagues that he would take them all to Rome when the season was over to meet the pontiff. Somehow, the joke got taken seriously.
“As the summer progressed, more and more of the staff would come up to me and say ‘’So when are we going to the Vatican?’ I was getting a little desperate. In the end I went to signor Antonio Sersale, told him about how my offhand comment had snowballed, and asked him if he thought a papal audience was within the realms of possibility”. Luckily, a local limoncello producer, Valentino Esposito of Valentì, had Vatican connections, and “somehow”, Giovanni relates, “we actually made it happen”.
View
On November 4 of that year, the entire staff of Le Sirenuse joined an audience with Pope Francis.
View
Antonio and Carla Sersale were seated to the Pope’s right, at the top of the steps leading up from Bernini’s piazza to Saint Peter’s Basilica. They presented His Holiness with a decorative plate depicting Positano’s mother church and much-venerated Virgin Mary icon, while Giovanni and more than 150 colleagues looked on from a front-row position just below the steps.
View
A Rome jaunt that began with a light-hearted quip turned out, Giovanni tells Le Sirenuse Journal, to be “a deeply moving experience that my colleagues and I will never forget”.
Arrivederci Giovanni, we will miss you. All the best for the future!
Photos © Roberto Salomone
Le Sirenuse Newsletter
Stay up to date
Sign up to our newsletter for regular updates on Amalfi Coast stories, events, recipes and glorious sunsets
A member of
