Welcome to Sorrento

by Nicoletta Speltra.

Sorrento and its sea. Sorrento and its ancient downtown, with the path of orthogonal streets of Roman origin. Towards the top of the hill, instead, the part enclosed in the 16th century walls, contemporaneous with Torquato Tasso, born here in 1544.  Here on there are the neo-gothic Cathedral, rebuilt in the 15th century, and the Church of Saint Francis, with a nice little cloister of 14th century, with some Arabian style arches. The museum Correale di Terranova is very interesting, here you can find some collections of Greek and Roman artifacts, Capodimonte porcelain and paintings of the XVII-XIX centuries. From the museum park you can enjoy a magnificent view of the gulf.

Going west, you find Punta del Capo with some fascinating remains of the Roman Villa of Pollio Felice and, under the romantic Hotel de la Syrene, another building overlooking the sea: it is the Villa of Agrippa Postumus.

Sorrento welcomes every year thousands of tourists, especially British, attracted by the beauty of the town, of the beaches and of its “unrivaled in Europe” mild climate, as François-René de Chateaubriand described it in 1810.

Some years later, Gaetano Moroni, bibliophile and papal dignitary, wrote:

“Few cities can boast its really lovely, romantic, delicious, and very most agreeable situation, which can not be expressed in few words; so well as the charming and graceful promontory and for the pure and salubrious air. So it was appealed miracle of nature and highly renowned”

Something more: in Sorrento there are also ancient traditions that survive thanks to the work of fishermen and craftsmen. One of them is Antonino Tramontano. Until few time ago, his yard was very similar to a magic cave with the walls covered by the tools of the trade, used to built the typical fishing boats witch float on the sea of the Naples Gulf.

 

Nicoletta Speltra

Pics courtesy of Anna Maria Speltra