Sorrento holds its ground on a limestone cliff two hundred feet above the Bay of Naples, lemon groves climbing the terraces behind it and Capri sitting hazy on the water below. The town has spent two centuries perfecting the art of arrival: funiculars descending to the marina, church bells marking the hour over piazzas thick with the scent of citrus. At the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, clifftop gardens have hosted everyone from European royalty to Enrico Caruso, and the terrace still does its best work at dusk, when the bay turns copper and Vesuvius sits quiet on the horizon. South of town, the coast road toward Positano earns its reputation honestly: hairpin after hairpin cut into rock, the Tyrrhenian Sea dropping away on one side and pastel villages clinging to the cliffs on the other, a drive that asks for a car with real composure at low speed and real nerve at every bend. Sorrento is not a place you pass through. Rent or hire a sports car with Zeus Prestige and the Amalfi road becomes the whole point of the trip, not the way you get to it.
Where lemon groves meet the Amalfi cliffs and Capri waits hazy across the bay