Instagram-friendly Positano is truly beautiful, but is it worth the sky-high prices?

Positano, Italy, is a lot like the Kingsman and Rocketman star Taron Egerton. “ Oh, that guy!”   They’re not household names (yet), but I’d wager pretty much anyone would recognise them in a photo. That’s because Positano has become a trendy spot for budding social media influencers to visit in recent years. It has even welcomed celebrities like Bradley Cooper and Irina Shayk (all good things must come to an end).

It makes sense, too: Positano is stunning to behold. Its kaleidoscopic buildings cascade down the hillside like someone has spilled a giant bag of Skittles. It’s the perfect spot to strike a pose, take a selfie, and get the all-important food shots all in one place.

The #Positano hashtag has been in the captions of more than 1.5 million Instagram posts, and that’s without mentioning the times it has been tagged as a location.

The issue with Instagram is that you don’t get the full story – as long as something looks good, it is good, according to the platform.

But what is the town itself like?

I travelled to southern Italy to find out whether Positano was just an Instagram thirst trap, or if it had a soul of its own.

Lo and behold, I bumped into the influencer couple Christian LeBlanc and Katy Esquivel, who have 3 million combined followers on Instagram and 7.5 million combined followers on YouTube, and discussed why the town has become such an attraction.

Getting to Positano isn’t easy. The nearest major city is Naples, and from there, you’ll need to rent a car and drive for an hour and a half, take a coach, or do what I did and take a train to nearby Sorrento and then get on a bus.

The best way to travel by train to Sorrento if you’re a tourist is by the Campania Express.

While a little pricier than the regular commuter train – though it still costs only €15 (US$17) for a return ticket – you’ll skip plenty of suburban stations and just hit on tourist spots like Pompeii along the way.