Garbo met Stokowski in Rome and they drove south to the village of Ravello, where the formality of presenting their passports to the town's mayor made it possible for the media to find them. Within a few days, the whole countryside knew about their famous guests.
The couple were staying at the flower-decked Villa Cimbrone in Ravello. Shestayed under the name Margaret Luisa Gustafsson. The centuries-old Cimbrone was built on a cliff overlooking the coastal city of Amalfi and the Gulf of Salerno.
  
Garbo at the flower-decked Villa Cimbrone in Ravello
Despite a “Keep Out” sign posted on the front gate, the congregation of fans and reporters continued to multiply; tourists mingled with locals and the media. Four carabinieri and three police dogs were assigned to protect the villa's occupants.
Reporters gathered in strategic areas near the balcony and behind the garden wall, hoping to get a glimpse of the mysterious one. What they got instead were snippets of innocuous banter as Greta and Stoki did their morning exercises.
Marriage rumors circulated with all kinds of improbable scenarios. A truce was struck with the press. In exchange for a promise to leave them alone for the remainder of their stay, Garbo and Stokowski agreed to a March 17 press conference at their villa.
Garbo and Stokowski
Stokowski appeared first. He was smooth and well-prepared for the barrage of personal questions, making a poignant appeal for people to leave them in peace “so that Miss Garbo can see something of Italy – at least more than I can see from my window.”
Greta entered the library and sat near the fire. She wore a subtle combination of Swedish colors: a blue gabardine suit, Norfolk jacket, yellow sweater, blue woolen scarf, flat suede shoes, and gray gloves; her hair was straight and she had limited her makeup to mascara and a trace of face powder.
Reporters were no longer distracted by the view of the bay. Again, Garbo maintained she was quite unwilling to change her single status. “I only want to be let alone,” she reiterated. “There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar.”
“I only want to be let alone,” she reiterated.
Regarding her trip, she said that she had seen very little of the world. "I wanted to see some of the beautiful things of life with my friend, Mr. Stokowski, who has been very much to me. He has seen so much and knows about the beauty of life and ... I optimistically accepted. I was naïve enough to think we could travel without being discovered and without being hunted. ... It is cruel to bother people who want to be left in peace. This kills beauty for me."
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