The Historic Centre of Sorrento

Between the town walls rest the monuments, churches and the testimonies of antique civilizations; walking through the streets of the historic centre, the antique Greek-Roman structure is still legible, memory represented vividly in via Pietà, via S. Cesareo, via Padre Reginaldo Giuliani and via Tasso.
Along these antique streets, small dim lights aligned on the walls of tuff, reveal the treasures and tell the secrets of the historic centre.
Via Pietà, an antique major decuman, timidly exhibits the Arab-Byzantine decorations of the Veniero Palace and the Correale Palace with its majestic courtyard with majorica tiles of the 1700's.

Along the other decuman - via S. Cesareo - it's possible to admire "Sedile di Porta" and "Dominava", where the nobility of Sorrento reunited; inside the City's coat of arms and those of the local patrician families are portrayed. Its majorica tiled dome dates back to the 1600's.
Continuing along via P.R. Giuliani and via Tasso, the portals of the antique noble homes, designed in Catalan style, appear majestic. It is between these streets that at dawn a scent of bread and sweets just taken out of the oven is diffused; and as the moon slowly gives up its place to the sun, voices are multiplied and mixed with the murmurs, footsteps and the thousand colours of the marketplaces that cheer up the historic centre daily; and then…the odour of the glue and the typical noise of the saws, planes and hammers that pronounce day after day, year after year, the patient and precious work of the teachers of the Sorrentine marquetry, an art born between '700 and '800.
The Cathedral, with its inlaid wooden chorus, the Basilica of Sant'Antonino with its pulpit and the Museo Correale with the Saltovar collection, jealously preserve the memory of the old teachers of marquetry, incomparable artists of wood.
Then there is the Chiostro of San Francesco, splendid medieval monument with 14th century arches, and in the immediate vicinity stands the "Casa Fasulo" where Torquato Tasso, an illustrious Sorrentine poet, found hospitality.
From the centre of the city, continuing along via Correale, you reach the Museo Correale of Terranova, which preserves paintings, porcelains, majorica tiles and an entire section dedicated to marquetry.
The centre of Sorrento is extremely rich, each alley, shop, church and building, has a story to show and tell. Each corner hides a legend to be narrated and findings to be admired just waiting for visitors "greedy" for history and culture, to satisfy.

THE OLD WALLS
The only part of the Greek defensive wall still remaining is under the road at the Porta Parsano Nuova (new Parsano Gate) and can be viewed close to the same door. Another ruin of the Greek wall other than that of the Marina Grande Gate and very limited in size is the small tract (just over three metres) of the western end located in via Sopra Le Mura. The Roman town was built over the Greek one following the same urban plan with walls of large isodomic blocks. These walls stood to defend Sorrento through the Middle Ages. Rebuilding began in 1551 and was only completed in 1561 after the tragic Turkish invasion.

CHURCH OF THE SERVANTS OF MARY
In Baroque style this church was completed in the XVIII century. The site of the congregation of the servants of Maria, it conserves inside a wooden statue of the dead Christ, by an unknown sculptor which is carried during the Good Friday procession by confratemity members in black robes and hoods.

CATHEDRAL
In Romanic style it dates to the XVth century; the side door is from the same period (1474) and in Renaissance style. Amongst other things the church houses paintings by artists from the Neapolitan school of the 1700s, an archibishops throne in fine marbles (1573) and a wooden marquetry work of Sorrentine craftsmen of the beginning of the 19th century. Works of art always made by using the marquetry technique can be admired in the interior, such as the pictures of the stations of the Cross or the wooden panels of the main and side entrance. These are all works of recent young masters of marquetry art.

CATHEDRAL BELLTOWER - BISHOP’S PALACE
Noteworthy is the belltower’s base from the Romanic era probably built around the VIth century with various types of trunks of columns, alternating classic and Byzantine capitals with a base of statues and every type of marble fragments. In the two highly raised arches and on the columns placed at the corners its clearly Byzantine accent can be noted. This construction is important to the town’s urban history since the small spaces under the raised arches and adjoining bend onto Via Pietà at the beginning of the Bishop’s Palace were used for years for public gatherings before these were held inside the castle. The upper part of the tower was either rebuilt or at least greatly reduced to its present size around the XVth century.

FIFTEENTH CENTURY HOUSE
The only curious examples of local architecture deriving from the influx of Tuscan experts working in Naples in the second half of the 1400s are the small building with lodge in Vico Galantarario, the capitals which can be found in a Neapolitan staircase in Via S. Arcangelo a Baiano and those of the Pontano Chapel with the only variation of leaf placed inside out.

CORREALE PALACE (XIVTH CENTURY)
The facade of this building exhibits valuable acute-arched mullioned windows in dark tufo in various shapes and designs, with small arches and lobed rosewindows. There is a beautiful large window with an overhanging pointed arch which rests on polystyle piers upheld by corbers and crowned by Gothic capitals of acanthus leaves, in the keystone of the arch the coat-of-arms is incised. The portal is characteristically Neapolitan -a depressed arch with Durazzesque Catalan patterns and was used from the end of the 1300s all through the 1400s.

VENIERO PALACE (XIIITH CENTURY)
Despite the alterations which it has undergone over the centuries, its abandoned state and the fact that all its windows have been walled over this building is of exceptional rarity and worth as it represents the late Byzantine and Arab taste uniquelly drafted in compositive organic continuity.
The three large arched windows on each floor are surrounded by wide fillet in grey and yellow tufo, two narrower fillet, used ad floor markers underline the two rows of windows and round tiles, like small rose-windows with majolica paterae in the centre alternate at the apertures with a slightly raised contour at the base of theplaster. The inlaid tufo decoration deve- lops a succession of lozenges with the exception of the central window whose frieze follows a zig-zag motif.

THE CORREALE HOUSE IN THE TASSO SQUARE
In the main square, once called largo of the castle, exactly at the corner where Via Pietà begins another Correale Palace is located. The inscription on the portal’s marble scroll ornament bears the date 1768 but it is known that as early as the XVth century a house belonging to this family stood here and was later totally transformed by the 17th century reconstruction.

THE CHURCH OF CARMINE (ST. MARY OF CARMELO)
Reconstructed at the end of the 15th century, on the remains of a previous ancient Church dedicated to the sacred sorrentine Martyrs, the Church of Carmine has only a single nave. At the far end there is an ancient impression of Mary, the Madonna, which is a copy of the Drk skinned Virgin of the Church dedicated to the same Saint in Naples. Once can admire paintings of good quality of artists of the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as two artistic gilded wooden bone containers of Saints which date back to the 16th century.

PORTA SEAT (XVITH CENTURY)
In the corner which Via S. Cesareo forms with the Tasso Square where the Sorrentine club is now located there once stood a second Seat called Porta because it was originally built near the city’s main gate in the area then called Largo del Castello. After the abolition of the seats it was first turned into a prison and then a guard-house for the urban militia and finally a meeting place for the Sorrentine club.

BASILICA OF ST. ANTONINO
Its origin dates to the XIth century although there was already an oratory dedicated to St. Antonino here in the IXth century. The church presents various elements of plunder such as the column shafts which for their particular uniformity probably come from the portico of one of the many Roman villas present in the area. In the crypt, rebuilt in the 1700s, numerous ex-voto paintings, mainly of sailors can be observed. Of interest are the XVIIIth century Crib from the Sammartino school and the southern portail in Byzantine-Romanic form dating to the IXth century.

THE CHURCH OF ST. MARY OF THE MIRACLES - (S. MARIA DELLE GRAZIE)
The fifteenth century Church which includes a convent of a closed order of Dominican Nuns, was founded by the nobile sorrentine Lady Berardina Donnorso at the end of the 15th century. The church has a single nave and treasures esteemed works of southern italian painters who painted in the period between the end of the 15th and beginning of the 17th centuries, such as S. Buono, M. Malinconico, P. Caracciolo and B. Corenzio.

CHURCH AND CLOISTER OF ST. FRANCIS
The monastery’s origin dates to the first half of the VIIIth century. The cloister’s architecture presents crossed arches in tufo on two sides of the portico, expressing the style of the late 1300s and substituted on the other two sides by round arches on octagonal pilasters.
Various elements of pillage are present as in the three corner columns reutilized functionally after being taken from pagan temples. Next to the convent is the church of St. Francis which dates to the XVIth century. Inside, in the first of the three chapels on the right a wooden statue depicting the saint with Christ on the cross can be admired. It was donated by the Vulcano family in the XVIIth century.

PART OF THE HOUSE OF TASSO
On the right of the road which from the F. S. Gargiulo Square leads to the Vittoria Square is the entrance to the Imperial Tramontano which incorporates two rooms left from the house where Torquato Tasso, author of Jerusalem Liberated, was born in 1544.

CHURCH OF THE ROSARY, FORMETLY OF SAINT FELICE AND BACCOLO
Commonly referred to as the St. Rosary it was probably built under the empire of Constantine the Great (310) over the remains of an old pagan temple called pantheon. It was Sorrento’s cathedral from the XIIth to the XVth century.

HOUSE OF CORNELIA TASSO
At number 11 Via S. Nicola is the Fasulo House, once the Sersale House (noteworthy the ashlar-work portico and pretty little balcony). Cornelia Tasso, Torquato’s sister and Marzio Sersale’s wife lived here, and continued to after she was widowed with her sons Antonino and Alessandro. In July 1577 Torquato escaped from the castle of Ferrara and embarked at Gaeta to present himself here disguised as the poet’s messenger later revealing his true identity. He stayed with his sister until December, then left for Rome. In the entrance hall is a vault decorated with stems, military trophies and inscriptions from 1615 in memory of the poet...

CHURCH OF THE ANNUNCIATION
The origin of this church is antique althiugh the date of its foundation is not known. It was probably built on the remains of the temple dedicated to the godess Cybele. From 1391 in this church (which was adjoined to a monastery) the Agostinian fathers of the congregation of St John in Carbonara from Naples officiated. The church was conceded by their request in 1811 to the co-patrons of the Chapels on condition that they took on all maintenance expenses. They, in turn, granted definitely to the lay congregation of St Monica in 1854.

DOMINOVA SEAT
This the only remaining testimony in Campania of the old noble seats and dates to the WXIth century.
It has a quadrilateral form with two corner arches in piperno (lava) permitting the view of the interior of the cupola and the end walls with 18th century frescoes. The pilasters and polystyle arches with their capotals are in archaic style.
The 17th century cupola is formed by green and yellow majolica roof-tiles.