In year 1893, Pantaleone Caruso (who already owned a vineyard and produced an excellent wine) and his wife, rented 5 rooms in one of the wings of the Marquis D’Afflitto’s eleventh century palace and opened the "Pensione Belvedere". He chose this name because of the hanging gardens facing the mountains and plunging down to the sea. Getting there was not an easy thing, but the efforts of the first daring tourists were paid off by the splendid views: blooming lemon groves and lush vineyards stippled by white roofs against the blue of the sea and of the sky. The guests were simply fascinated: glorious food, glorious home made wine and glorious view.

The Hotel served as a favourite haunt of the Bloomsbury Group, Virginia Woolf and Lord Keynes among others, and it also helped Graham Green and William Styron to find the way, respectively, to The Third Man and Set This House On Fire. Last but not least to fall to Ravello’s charms is Gore Vidal who wrote, while staying at room n° 9, his Myra Breckinridge. He will leave Ravello no more, becoming a freeman of this corner of paradise.

In 1903 a journalist guest in love with the Hotel, wrote a long article on the New York Times and the Caruso suddenly became very famous across the Atlantic. Wealthy Americans, who wintered on the European rivieras and sought charming places in which to stay, immediately adopted that remote little hideaway which, when its five rooms soon became twenty-four, was transformed into a hotel occupying the entire palazzo, and the owner’s name was added to the original "Belvedere".

Pantaleone was the first Caruso to become famous. When the tenor Enrico Caruso landed in New York to make his debut at the Metropolitan and needed to sign a promissory note, the singer was asked if he was a relative of Caruso from Ravello, and he said yes.

During the years guests were welcomed by the same enormous fireplace, the eighteenth –century frescoes, the terrace framed by Norman arches, the park filled with pergolas, oleanders, wisteria, the two stone lions "guarding" the entrance and, in the distance, the Belvedere that made the hotel such a success.