Perched along Italy’s fabled Amalfi Coast — that cliff-hugging stretch between Amalfi and Positano — this rare modernist villa, now offered for sale with Lionard Luxury Real Estate, stands apart even on a coastline renowned for glamorous resorts, historic villages, luxury villas, and sun-drenched lemon groves. Price is available upon request with the listing agency.

Designed in 1972 by Gae Aulenti, the trailblazing Milanese architect famed for her work on the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and Palazzo Grassi in Venice, La Grotta Rosa is a 5,400-square-foot luxury villa carved directly into the cliffs of Conca dei Marini — a UNESCO World Heritage enclave on Italy’s Amalfi Coast — complete with private sea access, panoramic terraces, and a grotto pool unlike anything else on the Mediterranean.

The Amalfi Coast has long been Italy’s elite summer destination, drawing Milanese industrialists, Neapolitan dynasties, and, more recently, international creatives, celebrities, and high-net-worth individuals seeking authentic Italian coastal living — an elegant alternative to the glitz of Capri or the gloss of the French Riviera. Yet even here, a private waterfront villa with direct sea access remains a rarity.

Known locally as the Pink Grotto for the way its vaulted interiors and sea-facing pool dissolve into the natural rock, La Grotta Rosa was neither a showpiece nor a speculative development. It remained a privately held, off-market estate — a rare collector’s property in the world of Italian coastal real estate.

Spread across three cascading levels, the villa exemplifies Aulenti’s modernist architecture: clean structural lines balanced by vaulted ceilings, Moorish arches, and hand-painted majolica tiles typical of the Amalfi Coast’s artisan tradition. Expansive terraces extend living spaces outdoors, framing sweeping Mediterranean views and blurring the boundary between home and landscape.

Inside, a vaulted reception room opens to a panoramic sea-view terrace, while a glass-walled kitchen flows into indoor-outdoor dining areas overlooking Conca dei Marini’s dramatic coastline. The main house includes two ensuite bedrooms with sea views, while guest annexes tucked into the terraced gardens offer additional suites — ideal for hosting in privacy.

Aulenti even designed a private elevator that glides from the street entrance down through the villa’s levels to its lower terraces — a rare architectural feature on the Amalfi Coast, famous for its steep, cliffside staircases.

At the heart of the estate is its signature sea-view pool: half exposed to the sun, half enclosed within a volcanic tuff grotto concealing a private wellness spa complete with lounge, bar, hottub, and sauna. It’s the kind of design flourish only an Italian modernist — and a master of spatial theatre — could create.

In a region where even exclusive beach clubs require an insider’s tip, La Grotta Rosa offers something better: a front-row seat to the raw beauty of the Amalfi Coast, combined with the architectural pedigree of a true design icon — and the rare luxury of private sea access on one of Italy’s most coveted coastlines.

See even more photos, 28+ of this property on Lionard Real Estate.