Sorrento is small enough to see in a day and rich enough to reward a week, and the trick is knowing which things genuinely repay your time. It is not a town of blockbuster museums; its pleasures are a square…
Supporting Guide
Where to Stay in Sorrento
Where you sleep in Sorrento decides the texture of the whole trip, and the first choice is not really price but position: how close to the old town, how high above the sea, how much quiet. Sorrento is compact, so…
A Sorrento Itinerary: 2 to 3 Days
Sorrento rewards a plan that is really an anti-plan: one day for the town, one for the sea, one for the ruins, with long lunches and slow evenings built in. Here is how I would spend two or three days…
Where to Eat and Drink in Sorrento
Sorrento eats well, in the honest, sun-and-sea way of Campania: potato gnocchi baked with tomato and mozzarella, fish pulled from the bay that morning, pasta with clams, and lemons in everything from the pasta to the after-dinner glass. This is…
The Best Time to Visit Sorrento
Sorrento has a season for almost everyone, but the differences between them are real: the same town is a blossom-scented idyll in May, a hot and crowded resort in August, and a shuttered, peaceful village in January. This is my…
The Best Photo Spots in Sorrento
Sorrento is a town built for photographs, and almost all of them are about the same two things: the bay and the light. Vesuvius across the water, the painted boats of the marina, a ravine full of green, a cloister…
Day Trips from Sorrento
The best argument for basing yourself in Sorrento is everything you can reach from it. In under an hour by boat or train you can be on Capri, in Positano, walking Pompeii under Vesuvius, or eating pizza in Naples. This…
Getting to Sorrento and Getting Around
Sorrento is easy to reach once you know the one quirk: the nearest airport is Naples, and the little train that serves the town does not stop there, so you connect through the city. Once you have arrived, you will…
Getting to Assisi and the Best Day Trips
Getting to Assisi is easier than the town’s pink hilltop silhouette makes it look, and once you have arrived it becomes the perfect base for wandering the rest of Umbria. The one thing to understand before you go is that…
The Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi: A Complete Guide
The Basilica of San Francesco is the reason most people come to Assisi, and it is the one place in town I always send friends to first. It is two churches stacked into the hillside, a UNESCO World Heritage Site,…
The Best Photo Spots in Assisi
Assisi is one of those hill towns that seems built to be photographed, all pale limestone and pink Subasio stone stacked up a green mountainside, glowing at the end of the day. I have carried a camera up and down…
The Best Time to Visit Assisi
The best time to visit Assisi, if you want the town at its gentlest, is spring or autumn: roughly April into May, and September into October. That is when the light is soft on the pale limestone, the hills are…
