Sorrento Culture

Sorrento’s craft is intarsia — pictures and patterns built from thin pieces of coloured wood, inlaid into boxes, tables and panels. It became a local industry in the nineteenth century, selling to Grand Tour visitors, and it is still practised in workshops in and around the centre. A dedicated museum in an eighteenth-century palazzo sets out how it is done.

The other export is the lemon. The Sorrento lemon is a protected local variety, large and thick-skinned, grown under pergolas on the terraces, and it is the basis of limoncello, which is made by steeping the peel in alcohol. The fruit also turns up in the local cakes, particularly the delizia al limone.

Sorrento is the subject of Torna a Surriento, written in 1902 and now one of the most recorded Neapolitan songs in existence. The town leans on the association heavily, which is forgivable, and it is genuinely why some visitors arrive already knowing the name.