Sorrento
Discover Sorrento
A concise introduction to Sorrento, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Sorrento is a town of about sixteen thousand people on the north side of the Sorrentine Peninsula, the finger of land that separates the Bay of Naples from the Gulf of Salerno. The old centre is small and largely pedestrian, laid out on a Roman street grid that is still legible, and it ends abruptly at the edge of a cliff.
Two harbours sit below: Marina Grande, still a fishing village, and Marina Piccola, where the ferries dock. Behind the town the Lattari mountains rise quickly, and the slopes between are terraced with lemon groves grown under chestnut-pole pergolas.
Most visitors use Sorrento as a base rather than a destination in itself, which is a fair reading of what it is good at — though the town has a woodworking tradition, a serious museum and a set of fifteenth-century buildings that reward a day of their own.