Sorrento: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Sorrento stands on a shelf of volcanic tuff fifty metres above the sea, cut through by ravines, and every view in town is either down into one or out over the bay to Vesuvius. It was a stop on the Grand Tour, and the poets, singers and English families who came stayed long enough to leave their names on hotels and songs. Two hours on foot, flat in town and stairs down to the harbour.
A short history of Sorrento
The Greeks founded Surrentum here, and the Romans built summer villas on the cliffs, some of whose remains can still be seen above the sea. In 1544 the poet Torquato Tasso was born in the town. In the 18th and 19th centuries Sorrento was a stop on the Grand Tour of wealthy young Europeans, and its guests included Goethe, Byron, Dickens and Ibsen. In 1902 the song 'Torna a Surriento' was written, which became one of the best-known Neapolitan songs in the world. Today the town serves as a base for visits to Pompeii, Capri and the Amalfi Coast.
The ten best sights in Sorrento
1Piazza TassoThe main square, built over the gorge, named after the poet born here
2Vallone dei MuliniAn abandoned mill at the bottom of a ravine, swallowed by ferns
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3Marina Grande
The fishermen’s harbour, with tables on the water and no ferries
4Cloister of San FrancescoA small cloister of mixed arches, free, and weddings on Saturdays
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5Museo Correale
A noble family’s collection in their villa, with a garden down to the cliff
6Inlaid Wood MuseumThe marquetry Sorrento is known for, in an old palazzo
7Sorrento CathedralInlaid wooden stalls and a bell tower standing on Roman columns
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8Sedile Dominova
The old nobles’ loggia with a painted dome; now a men’s club with card tables
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9Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria
Where Caruso spent his last summer, and where a famous song about him was written
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10Bagni della Regina Giovanna
A natural sea pool inside the rocks, under a Roman villa
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Sorrento →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Sorrento:
Free walking tours in Sorrento
A town on the edge of a cliff
Sorrento stands on a shelf of volcanic tuff fifty metres above the sea, cut through by ravines, and every view in town is either down into one or out over the bay to Vesuvius. It was a stop on the Grand Tour, and the poets, singers and English families who came stayed long enough to leave their names on hotels and songs. Two hours on foot, flat in town and stairs down to the harbour.
- Piazza Tasso · The main square is built on a bridge over a ravine, and it is named after Torquato Tasso, born in Sorrento in 1544, whose epic of the Crusades was read across Europe for three centuries. The square is where the town meets in the evening and where the Circumvesuviana crowds arrive.
- Vallone dei Mulini · Look over the railing at the edge of the square: at the bottom of a ravine stands a ruined flour mill, overgrown with ferns. When the square was built over the ravine in the nineteenth century, the air below grew so damp that the mill had to close. It has been left to the plants ever since.
- Sedile Dominova · An open loggia of the fifteenth century under a painted dome, where the nobles of the town once met to govern. Today it belongs to a workers’ mutual society, and the men of the town play cards under the frescoes in the afternoon.
- Inlaid Wood Museum · Sorrento has made intarsia — pictures built from tiny pieces of differently coloured wood — since the nineteenth century, and its boxes and tables were sold to every visitor of the Grand Tour. The museum shows the old work and how it is still done.
- Villa Comunale · A public garden on the edge of the cliff, with the whole Bay of Naples spread below — the city, Vesuvius, and Ischia and Procida on the horizon. A lift goes down through the rock to the port, which is how to reach the ferries without the stairs.
- Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria · Enrico Caruso, the most famous tenor in the world, spent his last summer in this hotel in 1921, already ill; he died in Naples weeks later. In 1986 the singer Lucio Dalla stayed in the same suite, heard the story, and wrote the song Caruso there in a few days.
Lemons and the two gulfs
West of Sorrento the peninsula narrows to a point facing Capri, and the hillsides are lemon and olive groves covered in winter with straw mats on wooden frames. On the ridge you can see both the Bay of Naples and the Gulf of Salerno at once. Half a day to a day, by bus and on foot; bring water, the paths are exposed.
- I Giardini di Cataldo · A lemon grove in the middle of town where the family that has farmed it for generations makes limoncello on the spot. The Sorrento lemon is oval, thick-skinned and very fragrant, and it carries a protected name. The groves are covered in winter with mats called pagliarelle to keep off the frost.
- Bagni della Regina Giovanna · A pool of sea water enclosed by rock and reached through a natural arch, beside the ruins of a Roman villa of the first century. The legend says Queen Joanna of Naples bathed here with her lovers. A path goes down from the main road in about twenty minutes.
- Massa Lubrense · The town of the lemon and olive terraces, spread across a dozen hamlets on the slopes. Its harbour, the Marina della Lobra, is the small port where boats leave for the coves of the peninsula that cannot be reached by road.
- Il Deserto · A former Carmelite convent on a hilltop, now run by nuns, whose roof terrace may be the best view on the whole coast: Capri ahead, the Bay of Naples on one side and the Gulf of Salerno on the other, all at once.
- Punta Campanella · The tip of the peninsula, five kilometres across the water from Capri. The Greeks had a temple to Athena here, and the name comes from the bell rung from the watchtower to warn of pirates. The sea around it is a marine reserve, and the path out takes about an hour.
- Nerano · A village above a bay on the Amalfi side, and it gave its name to a dish now cooked all over Italy: spaghetti alla Nerano, with courgettes fried until soft and a local cheese melted through them. The beach below, Marina del Cantone, is where to eat it.
Under the volcano
Across the bay from Sorrento is Vesuvius, and in 79 AD it buried the Roman towns along its foot under ash and burning mud. Two of them are a short train ride away, and the volcano itself can be climbed to the rim. A full day; start at Pompeii at opening, and book the Vesuvius slot online.
- Pompeii · A Roman town of perhaps eleven thousand people, buried in a day and found again from 1748. The ash preserved the shapes of the people who died in it, and in the nineteenth century the archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli poured plaster into the hollows to make the casts you see. About a third of the town is still unexcavated.
- Herculaneum · A smaller and richer town that was buried deeper, under twenty metres of volcanic mud that set like stone. Because of that, wood survived here — beams, doors, furniture, even food — and on the old beach archaeologists found about three hundred skeletons of people who had fled to the boat sheds.
- Vesuvius · The volcano last erupted in 1944, during the Second World War, and destroyed about eighty Allied aircraft at an airfield below it. Since then it has been quiet, and a path climbs to the rim of the crater, steam still rising from its walls. Around six hundred thousand people live in the official red zone at its foot.
- Monte Faito · The mountain behind the peninsula, covered in beech forest — rare this close to the sea — and ten degrees cooler than the coast in August. From the top the whole bay lies open, with Vesuvius directly across the water.
- Vico Equense · A town on the cliff on the way back, and the place that invented selling pizza by the metre — long pizzas on planks, cut to order. It is also where the train from Pompeii comes back along the coast to Sorrento.
- Marina Grande · Back in Sorrento, the old fishermen’s harbour below the town, which the ferries never used. The boats are still pulled up on the sand, and the tables of the trattorie stand on wooden platforms over the water. It is the place to end the day.
Getting to Sorrento and getting around
- Naples Airport · About an hour by the shuttle bus that runs straight to Sorrento
- Sorrento Station · The end of the Circumvesuviana line from Naples and Pompeii; crowded, slow and cheap
- Villa Comunale · The terrace over the bay, and a lift down to the ferries for Capri and Naples
Cheap eats in Sorrento
The counter food of this coast is the food of Naples next door: a pizza a portafoglio, folded in four and eaten walking, a couple of euro, and fried things in paper — arancini, zeppole. Sorrento adds its lemons to everything: a granita of lemon in summer, the delizia al limone, a sponge dome soaked in lemon cream, and limoncello, which every shop pours to taste.
- Piazza Tasso · Delizia al limone by the piece at the bar
- I Giardini di Cataldo · Limoncello made on the spot, and lemon granita
- Vico Equense · Pizza by the metre, cut to order
- Nerano · Spaghetti with fried courgettes, in the village that named it
- Agerola · Fresh fior di latte and provolone from the mountain dairies
- Marina Grande · Fried fish in paper on the fishermen’s beach
Museums in Sorrento
The great museums of this coast are the buried towns across the bay; nothing anywhere shows ordinary Roman life as they do. In Sorrento itself the museums are small and private — a noble family’s villa, a craft of inlaid wood.
- Pompeii · Go at opening; the site is huge and has little shade
- Herculaneum · Smaller and better preserved; the wood survived
- Museo Correale · A family villa of paintings, porcelain and a cliff garden
- Inlaid Wood Museum · Sorrento’s marquetry, old and new
- Capo di Sorrento · The ruins of a Roman seaside villa on the headland
Nature and day trips near Sorrento
The Sorrento peninsula is a ridge of limestone between two gulfs, terraced with lemons and olives, falling to the sea in cliffs with small coves at the bottom. Its tip is a marine reserve, and behind it rises a mountain of beech forest.
- Baia di Ieranto · A protected bay, on foot or by sea only
- Punta Campanella · The tip facing Capri; an hour on foot
- Bagni della Regina Giovanna · A rock-enclosed pool; go in the morning
- Monte Faito · Beech woods and the view of Vesuvius
- Vesuvius · The walk to the crater rim
- Fiordo di Furore · A narrow inlet under a bridge
Things to do in Sorrento with kids
The coast here is mostly rock and wooden bathing platforms rather than sand, so for small children the boat trips and the pools are the easier day. Pompeii works for older children; go early and keep it short.
- Marina del Cantone · A long pebble beach with shallow water
- Capri · The ferry ride and the boat round the island
- Vesuvius · Looking into a real volcano
- Pompeii · Streets, shops and stepping stones from Roman times
- Villa Comunale · The lift through the rock down to the port
- Monte Faito · Cool woods and picnic spots in summer
Holy places in Sorrento
Sorrento’s churches are small and decorated with its own craft — inlaid wood in the cathedral’s choir. The finest religious buildings of the region are along the Amalfi coast, and the most impressive view from any convent is on the ridge above town.
- Sorrento Cathedral · Inlaid wood stalls and a campanile on Roman columns
- Cloister of San Francesco · Arches of different periods round one garden
- Il Deserto · A convent with a terrace over both gulfs
- Amalfi · The cathedral at the top of the stair
- Ravello · A cathedral and gardens on the ridge
Nightlife in Sorrento
Sorrento in the evening is a passeggiata along Corso Italia and drinks on the cliff-top terraces as the lights of Naples come on across the bay. The streets around Piazza Tasso have the bars; Capri’s square, a ferry away, is the glamorous version.
- Piazza Tasso · The evening square and the bars around it
- Villa Comunale · Sunset over the bay and Vesuvius
- Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria · A drink on the terrace of Caruso’s last summer
- Marina Grande · Dinner over the water at the fishermen’s harbour
- Ravello · Concerts in the gardens over the sea, summer
Frequently asked questions about Sorrento
What is there to see in Sorrento?
The top sights in Sorrento are Piazza Tasso, Vallone dei Mulini and Marina Grande. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Sorrento?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Sorrento without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Sorrento?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Sorrento, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: A town on the edge of a cliff.
How do you get to Sorrento and get around?
The main ways are Naples Airport, Sorrento Station and Villa Comunale. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Sorrento, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Sorrento that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Sorrento for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.