Capo di Sorrento (Cape Sorrento) is the limestone promontory that closes on the West the bay of Sorrento, which has in the inner side the volcanic cliffs falling sheer on the sea. The road which leads to Capo di Sorrento is pleasantly panoramic and on its sides many hotels has been built in the Sixties, when there was a period of economic expansion. But to arrive to the cape you have to take a pedestrian street which starts from the car road to Massa Lubrense.

The street, paved with stones, goes down to the sea among terraces cultivated with olive trees, and in the last stretch the gaze can sweep over the lovely scenery of the bay in front of Sorrento up to the Vesuvius on the opposite side. On the point of the cape there are the remains of the famous Roman villa by Pollius Felix, belonging to the early imperial age, when the Roman aristocracy elected the Gulf of Naples as preferred destination for their vacations, disseminating many and rich villas all over the coast.

But, during the Roman Age, Sorrento was not always this paradise of leisures and beauty as in the first imperial age. After it had been conquered from the Sanniti in the V century b.C., Surrentum entered gradually in the Roman influence and had periods of various fortune. During the Social War, Sorrento joined to the party of Mario through the Lega Nocerina, which was struck in battle in the 90 b.C. The following year it was definitively submitted by Silla and transformed in colony of Sillan veterans, common punishment for many rebellious towns, divided among the winners.

After the Empire was established, Sorrento became one of the most appreciated towns by the Roman aristocracy. Besides the Pollius' villa on the Capo, there were in Sorrento others remarkable villas, among which the one owned by the emperor Octavian, on the small promontory which divides the Marina Grande from the area of the actual harbour, at Marina Piccola. In this villa he exilied his nephew Agrippa Postumus. In the 79 a.D. Sorrento received serious damages by the earthquake caused from the renown eruption of the Vesuvio which caused the destruction of Ercolano and Pompeii. It also symbolically marked the end of that golden age.  [ More...]