Sorrento

Sorrento is a small city in Campania, Italy, with some 16,500 inhabitants. It is a popular tourist destination. The town can be reached easily from Naples and Pompeii, as it lies at the south-eastern end of the Circumvesuviana rail line. The town overlooks the bay of Naples, as the key place of the Sorrentine Peninsula, and many viewpoints in the city allow sight of Naples itself (visible across the bay) and Vesuvius.

The "Amalfi drive" (connecting Sorrento and Amalfi) is the narrow road that threads around the high cliffs above the Mediterranean.

Ferry boats and hydrofoils provide services to Naples, Amalfi, Positano, Capri and Ischia. Sorrento's sea cliffs are impressive and its luxury hotels have attracted famous personalities including Enrico Caruso and Luciano Pavarotti.

Sorrento is famous for the production of Limoncello, an alcoholic aperitif made from lemon rinds, alcohol, water and sugar. Other agricultural production include agrumes, vine, nuts and olive trees. Wood craftsmanship is also developed.


History

Roman origins
The legends indicate a close connexion between Lipara and Surrentum, as though the latter had been a colony of the former; and even through the Imperial period Surrentum remained largely Greek. Before the Roman supremacy it was one of the towns subject to Nuceria, and shared its fortunes up to the Social War; it seems to have joined in the revolt of 90 BCE like Stabiae; and was reduced to obedience in the following year, when it seems to have received a colony.

Its prosperity dates from the imperial period, when Capreae was a favourite residence of Augustus and Tiberius. Numerous sepulchral inscriptions of Imperial slaves and freedmen have been found at Surrentum. An inscription shows that Titus in the year after the earthquake of 79 CE restored the horologium of the town and its architectural decoration. A similar restoration of an unknown building in Naples in the same year is recorded in an inscription from the last-named town.

The most important temples of Surrentum were those of Athena and of the Sirens (the latter the only one in the Greek world in historic times); the former gave its name to the promontory. In antiquity Surrentum was famous for its wine (oranges and lemons which are now so much cultivated there not having been introduced into Italy in antiquity), its fish, and its red Campanian vases; the discovery of coins of Massilia, Gaul and the Balearic Islands here indicates the extensive trade which it carried on.

The position of Surrentum was very secure, protected by deep gorges. The only exception to its natural protection was 300 yards on the south-west where it was defended by walls, the line of which is necessarily followed by those of the modern town. The arrangement of the modern streets preserves that of the ancient town, and the disposition of the walled paths which divide the plain to the east seems to date in like manner from Roman times. No ruins are now perserved in the town itself, but there are many remains in the villa quarter to the east of the town on the road to Stabiae, of which traces still exist, running much higher than the modern road, across the mountain; the site of one of the largest (possibly belonging to the Imperial house) is now occupied by the Hotel Victoria, under the terrace of which a small theatre was found in 1855; an ancient rock-cut tunnel descends hence to the shore. Remains of other villas may be seen, but the most important ruin is the reservoir of the (subterranean) aqueducts just outside the town on the east, which had no less than twenty-seven chambers each about 270 by 60 cm Greek and Oscan tombs have also been found.

Another suburb lay below the town and on the promontory on the west of it; under the Hotel Sirena are substructions and a rock-hewn tunnel. To the north-west on the Capo di Sorrento is another villa, the so-called Bagni della Regina Giovanna, with baths, and in the bay to the south-west was the villa of Pollius Felix, the friend of Statius, which he describes in Silvae ii. 2, of which remains still exist. Farther west again are villas, as far as the temple of Athena on the promontory named after her at the extremity of the peninsula (now Punta Campanella). Neither of this nor of the famous temple of the Sirens are any traces existing.

According to the Roman historian Diodorus Siculus, Sorrento was founded by Liparus, son of Ausonus, who was king of the Ausoni and the son of Ulysses and Circe. The ancient city was probably connected to the Ausoni tribe indeed, one of the most ancient ethnical group in the area. In the pre-Roman age Sorrento was influenced by the Greek civilization: this can be seen in its plant and in the presence of the Athenaion, a great sanctuary, also, according to the legend, founded by Ulysses and originally devoted to the cult of the Sirens, whence Sorrento's name.


Origins of modern Sorrento
Sorrento became an archbishopric around 420 CE. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it was ruled by the Ostrogoths and then returned to the Eastern Empire. The Lombards, who conquered much of southern Italy in second half of the 6th century, sieged it in vain.

As in the following centuries the authority of the far Byzantium faded, Sorrento turned into an autonomous duchy. It fought against the neighbour rival Amalfi and the Saracens. In 1133 it was conquered by the Norman Roger II of Hauteville, and thenceforth Sorrento's history followed that of the newly created Kingdom of Sicily.

On June 13, 1558 it was sacked by Muslim pirates, and a new line of walls was therefore built. The most striking event of the following century was the revolt against the Spanish domination of 1648, led by Giovanni Grillo. In 1656 a plague struck the city, which remained anyway one of the most important centres of the southern Campania.

Sorrento entered also in the Neapolitan Republic of 1799, again in vain. In the 19th century the economy of the city improved markedly, favoured by the development of agriculture, tourism and trade. A route connecting Sorrento to Castellammare di Stabia was opened under the reign of Ferdinand II (1830-1859).

In 1861 Sorrento was officially annexed to the new Kingdom of Italy. In the following years, as well as in the 20th century, it confirmed and increased its status of one of the most renowned tourist destinations of Italy. Famous people who visited it include Lord Byron, Keats, Goethe and Walter Scott.


Culture
Sorrento was the birthplace of the poet Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), author of the Gerusalemme Liberata.

In the 1920s, famous Soviet writer Maxim Gorky lived in Sorrento.