SORRENTO
Sorrento (Neapolitan: Surriente) is a small city in Campania, southern 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), Vesuvius and the island of Capri.
The Amalfi Drive (connecting Sorrento and Amalfi) is the narrow road that threads around the high cliffs above the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Ferry boats and hydrofoils provide services to Naples, Amalfi, Positano, Capri and Ischia.
Sorrento's sea cliffs and luxury hotels have attracted famous personalities, including Enrico Caruso and Luciano Pavarotti.
Sorrento is famous for the production of limoncello, an alcoholic digestif made from lemon rinds, alcohol, water and sugar.
Other agricultural production includes citrus fruit, wine, nuts and olives. Wood craftsmanship is also developed.
History: The most ancient prehistoric testimony of the Sorrentine Peninsula, discovered inside the natural cavities along the coast between the Baia di Jeranto and Positano date back to the Middle Palaeolithic Age to the Mesolitic Age.
For the following ages the archeological researches have demonstrated a constant concourse of the area between Piano di Sorrento and Punta Campanella, from the Age of Enea (the tombs of the “Civiltà del Gaudio”) to the Roman Age.
During the Archaic Age, the Italic population settled in this area and became, as time went by, natives of the place who had mostly during the 6th and 5th century before Christ, contacts and a commerce with the Greek and the Etruscans by whom they were also particularly influenced.
After the beginning of the colonization, maybe the Greek visited Sorrento occasionally and later on more frequently.
Since the 6th century before Christ, the cult of Athena in the famous sanctuary of Punta Campanella is often documented.
This cult continues during the Samnite occupation, as proves an inscription discovered in 1985 on a wall of the headland. |
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