Italy: Get to Know Sorrento
Explore Sorrento as we continue our virtual tour of Italy, compliments of Cooking with Nonna's Rossella Rago.
By Deborah Long
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More Fun, Italian-Style!
This is the third in our four-part series highlighting great destinations in Italy. We've partnered with Cooking with Nonna, a web site that brings grandma's best Italian cooking to you, to get the inside scoop on sunny Sorrento. -
Buon Giorno, Sorrento!
Sorrento is an iconic Italian coastal city, with a bustling waterfront and charming cobbled streets. The villas and shops cling to the rugged mountainside, seeming to defy gravity while providing breathtaking views of the Mediterranean and nearby Mount Vesuvius. The pace is slower here than in Naples, but visitors are made to feel welcome and encouraged to explore this beautiful and historic city. -
Donatella TandelliWhen Life Gives You Lemon Rinds . . .
Using lemon rinds, sugar, and alcohol, the citizens of Sorrento create one of their most notable exports: limoncello.
“The first thing you notice about Sorrento,” Rossella says, “is that everything smells like lemons! Sorrento is famous for limoncello. There’s actually a whole street dedicated to it.”
For a non-alcoholic take on the local specialty, try the hard lemon candies – not too tart, not too sweet, and filled with a perfect little burst of liquid “limon”. -
Piazza Tasso
The heart of Sorrento is the Piazza Tasso, named for one of the most celebrated Renaissance poets, who was born here. This is where locals and tourists alike come to see and be seen, and you won’t find a better spot to people-watch. The Baroque Church del Carmine Maggiore, and the Palazzo Correale, an 18th-century mansion built around a 15th-century house that's owned by the aristocratic Correale family, are both on the square. -
Treasures to Take Home
Leading from the Piazzo Tasso is the Via San Cesareo, a street no shopper will want to miss. Here you’ll find leather goods, especially quality sandals, for which the city is known. But if you want a souvenir that can be enjoyed and passed down to future generations, look for a handcrafted box, nativity, or perhaps even a table featuring marquetry, a technique of layering differently shaded slivers of wood to form a pattern or a picture. Marquetry is said to have originated in Sorrento, home to world-class masters of the craft. -
Highway of the Sun
Perillo Tours eases the pain of leaving Sorrento by giving guests a chance to experience one of the most famous thoroughfares in the world. The Italians were the first country in the world to build motorways designed specifically for fast travel. As you wend your way through the beautiful countryside bound for Florence and Venice, relax and think of the others who have traveled this way before you — Dante, DaVinci, Galileo and Michelangelo, not to mention the poet Tasso. -
Courtesy Cooking with NonnaMangia et Bevi!
With this week’s recipes from Cooking with Nonna, you can make your own limoncello and more, bringing the flavors of Sorrento to your family’s table:
Limoncello
Gnocchi alla Sorrentina
Struffoli -
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I've tried to enter the Trip to Italy contest but Hotmail doesn't recognize italy@grandparents.com as
an email address. What do I need to do to enter?
Wow! What a merry Christmas this would make! ;D. Lucinda Olson
I have not gone very far, at least never that far. I would need a passport. That would be beyond exciting
My grandparents were born in Italy and I would love to travel there! I would love to take my daughter there to see where her ancestors came from. She is very interested in geneology and has become our family "historian".