June 5, 2025 (Positano, Italy) – The rooms that today host the Don’t Worry Music Bar were at the heart of the Sersale family’s seaside villa in Positano. They were something of a cocoon, where family and friends would gather to chat, read, or play cards. Soon after the Sersales transformed the property into a hotel in 1951, this pair of rooms with traditional cross-vaulted ceilings became Le Sirenuse’s original bar. They retained the intimate atmosphere of a meeting place for amici and amore, for soft conversation, good wine, and old-school cocktails. Today, this tucked-away enclave within the charmed Le Sirenuse has added la buona musica to the mix.
It was while on vacation in Tokyo that Le Sirenuse’s operations manager, Aldo Sersale, discovered the world of Japanese listening bars. These are spaces where the music is as important as the cocktails and the conversation, if not more so. The classic ongaku kissa or ‘listening café’ is dedicated to vinyl records reproduced on top-quality sound equipment. Aldo had long wanted to give Le Sirenuse’s original indoor bar a new energy while respecting its history and heritage. With its celebration of old-school, analogue audio pleasures, a listening bar, Aldo realised, was the perfect solution. It would also give guests of Le Sirenuse a convivial place to relax and enjoy a nightcap after dinner.
For the state-of-the-art sound system, he turned to audio consultant Stefano Menicagli, whose first contact with Le Sirenuse had come when Aldo’s grandfather Franco Sersale asked him to install a Linn Sondek vinyl HiFi system in his house in Rome. Stefano has since masterminded all the HiFi systems in the hotel. Stefano installed a system based around speakers by British firm ATC, a legend within the professional sound industry.
Finding a DJ with the right sensibility was proving to be more problematic until an acquaintance mentioned Paolo Sciabu, a Positano-born and bred who had worked the turntables in a couple of the Amalfi Coast resort’s dance bars in the 1990s. He was hired on the basis of a test playlist he made for Aldo. “Being a true analogue”, Aldo recounts, “Paolo came up with a knockout selection of high-quality music on vinyl reproduced as faithfully as possible, blending 60s, 70s and 80s rock and roll with some of the best Italian pop classics.’’
When it came to crafting a cocktail list for the Don’t Worry Music Bar, Aldo, head barman Roberto Pane and director of mixology Alessio Lupo decided to divide the menu between ‘Timeless Cocktails’ such as the Sazerac or the Hemingway Daiquiri, and a selection of eight ‘Italian Pop Classics’, inspired by some of the Italian songs of the 1950s to 1990s that Sciabu spins for guests. “I wanted the drinks to be fresh and fun”, Aldo explains, “but also to taste like they had decades of cocktail history behind them”. Alongside timeless drink classics, guests can indulge in signature desserts from Le Sirenuse’s renowned menu—such as the iconic Amalfi Lemon Delight, a beloved confection of the Amalfi Coast.
The bar takes its name from British artist Martin Creed’s neon work Don’t Worry, part of the Artists at Le Sirenuse site-specific contemporary art programme curated by Silka Rittson-Thomas. In 2025, the hotel inaugurates its latest installation – the seascape cycle Le Sirenuse I–XX by Swiss artist Caroline Bachmann, consisting of twenty painted tondos, now adorning the room’s arched ceiling alongside Creed’s artwork.
The Don’t Worry Music Bar is open every evening from 7 pm until late with the DJ starting at 9 pm.
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NOTES TO EDITORS:
About Le Sirenuse:
Le Sirenuse opened in 1951, in what until then had been the Sersale family’s summer house in Positano. Today the 58-room Amalfi Coast resort is considered an Italian hospitality icon, though it still retains the intimate, cultured atmosphere of a private home. More than a mere hotel, it has become over the years a lifestyle reference point that brings into fertile dialogue the worlds of fashion, culture, gastronomy, mixology and wellbeing, creating connections and crafting personal narratives.
Scenic La Sponda restaurant, informally glamorous bar-bistrot Aldo’s and the resort’s chic little Pool Bar showcase this southern Italian region’s authentic seasonal produce, while the Don’t Worry Music Bar is a true insiders’ speakeasy in tune with the rhythm of Positano nights.
Le Sirenuse also features a refreshingly contemporary Spa designed by architect Gae Aulenti, where a range of signature treatments are available, alongside a fitness area with two total-workout Megaformer machines. The resort is celebrated worldwide for its all-inclusive weekly activities, which include trekking on some of the Amalfi Coast’s spectacular mountain trails and more leisurely sunset cruises on the Sant’Antonio, the family’s traditional gozzo fishing boat.
Assembled over decades by art and antique collector Franco Sersale, the hotel’s elegant décor today enters into conversation with a growing site-specific contemporary art collection featuring talents of the calibre of Martin Creed and Nicolas Party, while the light-filled bedrooms are havens of dolce vita style.
Now as in the past, Le Sirenuse is a family affair. Third-generation Sersales, Aldo and Francesco, are increasingly involved in the day-to-day running of a hotel that their parents Antonio and Carla began to manage in 1991. Carla currently curates Emporio Sirenuse, the resort wear and lifestyle brand she founded in 2013, which takes inspiration from the deep-rooted Mediterranean culture of this charmed enclave south of Naples. For more information, please visit Sirenuse.it/en.
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Image Credits:
1. Le Sirenuse, Don't Worry Music Bar, 2025 Photography by Brechenmacher & Baumann.
2. Le Sirenuse, Don't Worry Music Bar, 2025 Photography by Roberto Salomone.
3. Le Sirenuse, Don't Worry Music Bar, 2025 Photography by Brechenmacher & Baumann.