Sorrento History

Sorrento (/səˈrɛntoʊ/, Italian: [sorˈrɛnto]; Neapolitan: Surriento [surˈrjendə]) is a town overlooking the Bay of Naples in Southern Italy. A popular tourist destination due to its variety of small antique shops[3] and location on the Amalfi Coast, it can be reached easily from Naples and Pompeii as it is at the south-eastern end of the Circumvesuviana rail line. The town is most known for its small shops selling ceramics, lacework and marquetry (woodwork).[4]

The Sorrentine Peninsula has views of Naples, Vesuvius and the Isle of Capri. The Amalfi Drive, connecting Sorrento and Amalfi, is a narrow road that threads along the high cliffs above the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Ferries and hydrofoils connect the town to Naples, Amalfi, Positano, Capri and Ischia. Sorrento's sea cliffs and luxury hotels have attracted celebrities including Enrico Caruso and Luciano Pavarotti.

Limoncello, a digestif made from lemon rinds, alcohol, water and sugar, is produced in Sorrento. Other agricultural production includes citrus fruit, wine, nuts and olives.

Sorrento has been visited by Lord Byron, John Keats, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Charles Dickens, Richard Wagner, Henrik Ibsen, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Sorrento was the birthplace of the poet Torquato Tasso, author of the Gerusalemme Liberata. The town was quite famously featured in the early 20th century song "Torna a Surriento" (Come Back to Sorrento) with lyrics by Giambattista De Curtis, brother of the song's composer, Ernesto De Curtis. In the 1920s, famous Soviet writer Maxim Gorky lived in Sorrento.

After the song "Torna a Surriento", the second masterpiece, which has spread the fame of Sorrento in the world, is "Caruso", a song composed in Sorrento, in the summer of 1985, by the Bolognese singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla, whose fifty-years ties with Sorrento are described in the novel by the Sorrentine writer, Raffaele Lauro, titled "Caruso The Song - Lucio Dalla and Sorrento", which was released in December 2014