travelling-blogger

comments

There is music here that whispers over the Bay of Naples, its notes refracted back by the rising sun as I lie on a brass bed wondering about the legendary figure who slept here before me and after whom my room is named: tenor  Enrico Caruso, the greatest singer the world  has ever known.

But it is Caruso's piano by the window that really draws me. It is a simple upright with brackets for candles, but it is the envy of every museum in the world. I get up and finger the keys. It is still tuned. Caruso played and sang his last notes in this room in Sorrento, a place that has more history and romance than even Rome.

Forget Positano, so passé with its itinerant, well-heeled tourists, or Ravello and its busloads of day-trippers. Here the past, present and future meet. Sorrento is the place where history turned and took a new direction. The footsteps of those who trod here form a pantheon of glory and love, genius and sublimity, war and peace.

Bliss: Sorrento is full of charm and intrigue, as well as being an excellent place to unwind

There is Nelson and Lady Hamilton, at whose request  the King of Naples helped the British fleet in its darkest hour; Wagner; the beautiful, doomed 'Sisi', Empress Elisabeth of Austria; Richard Strauss; Otto von Bismarck; King Edward VII and his tormented nephew, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.

Sorrento was the first popular resort on the Amalfi Coast and I am staying in its most celebrated hotel. The family-owned Grand Excelsior Vittoria has played host to luminaries for 180 years, making it the oldest hotel in southern Italy.

To walk through its rooms with high frescoed ceilings is to enter an enchanted realm. As well as the Caruso Suite, there is the Pavarotti Suite, with a mosaic floor and concave bed constructed to accommodate 'Fat Lucy's' increasing bulk. Then there is the suite favoured by Edward VII and the Kaiser, and the Pompeii Room, which is reserved for Sophia Loren.

Now these floors are being trod by a younger generation who are rediscovering the magic of Sorrento: George Clooney, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, the Linleys and even Victoria Beckham. For Sorrento, without its crowds of defibrillated trippers is not only an authentic port but, thanks to its new status as a World Heritage Site, a repolished gem.

Churches with Arabic domes – a legacy of Moorish invaders – now gleam, cobbled streets are pristine, and splendid villas are arranged around shady courtyards.

Shops sell exquisite clothing, cashmere, linen and leather for half the price of stores in Positano or Amalfi. The simple but charming restaurants on the port serve up hot fritto misto  di mare at only €10 (£8).

Classy: The Royal Terrace at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria has had some famous footsteps on it

Memories: In this brass bed once slept tenor Enrico Caruso, the greatest singer of all time

You don't have to have the income of a king to eat here, though kings have done so. Edward VII ate his last known meal abroad in the belle epoque restaurant of the Grand Excelsior Vittoria on March 20, 1910. The concierge shows me the yellowing luncheon menu with the King's spidery signature.

'Last Luncheon of His Majesty King Edward VII. Hors d'Oeuvres, Spaghetti Asperges, Cotelettes de Mouton, Pommes Diane, Patisserie de Maison.' Then there are five selections of vintage wines.
The hotel's current owner, Guido Fiorentino, who took over in 2011 after the death  of his father, says: 'It was not the first occasion he came  here. The first was in 1874  with one of his mistresses. 

Then he became one of our repeat guests!'

There is another interesting entry in the old guest books. Kaiser Wilhelm stayed in the hotel during another of Edward VII's visits, this time in 1908. This was after the Daily Telegraph Crisis which plunged Anglo-German relations to a new low (during  an interview, the Kaiser called the British mad). Did Edward seek out his wayward nephew as the politicians argued, I wonder? Did they speak at all? Or did Wilhelm blithely enjoy the  view from the hotel terrace, one of the most famous in the  ancient and modern world – the hotel is built on the foundations of a villa designed for the Emperor Augustus, and in the gardens the Roman columns still stand erect.

The hotel pianist is playing Torna A Surriento, the most popular Italian song after O Sole Mio. It was written at the turn of the last century by local composer Ernesto de Curtis and has been covered by every singer of note, including Caruso, Frank Sinatra and Elvis.

As I savour home-made pasta with sea urchin, fresh sea bass in a salt crust and orange ice cream infused with citrus from the nearby orchards, I can hear him sing: 'See the sea, it makes you dream when you're awake. Look at this garden, there is  no perfume so fine, it goes straight to your heart. If you leave this land of love you will have to return.'

There is a rejuvenating quality to Sorrento – perhaps it's  the tangy sea breeze, the local Cassata cake inspired by sweet Arab desserts, or the humour  of the locals.

Billy Wilder chose Sorrento  as the location for his last Jack Lemmon comedy, Avanti, released in 1972. As the middle-aged, suppressed Lemmon dines, he watches in amazement as an elderly Italian gets out of a wheelchair to dance with his nubile nurses. 'The nurses get younger every year,' says a waiter. 'This place takes years off you.' Lemmon's character succumbs and even swims naked before booking a room for a return visit.

Clark Gable was the first major Hollywood star to come here, with his then lover Ava Gardner. He left his dentures behind – on his return visit he brought three extra pairs and his fourth wife, the British beauty Lady Sylvia Ashley.

The town was abandoned by the jet-set in the 1970s for glitzier locations, but celebrities are feeling the pull of Sorrento again. George Clooney is allegedly planning a visit after his wedding in October. In the autumn, Placido Domingo and Andrea Bocelli will lead a concert on the 110th anniversary of de Curtis's composition, and the 180th anniversary of the Grand Excelsior Vittoria.

Sorrento never closes – it is a place for all seasons. Even in winter the temperature seldom dips below 14C, yet you can see snow on Vesuvius, which the Romans used to keep their wine cold.

Enjoying the holidays: Petronella Wyatt was lost for words by the enchantment of Sorrento, and right, Audrey Hepburn holidaying in Capri in summer season

The theatre and opera house thrives, and the museums are testimony to the area's brave maritime past. One is devoted to the painting of Sorrento-born Edoardo de Martino, whom Queen Victoria appointed Marine Painter in Ordinary, the only time that honour went to a foreigner.  A small villa, just opened to  the public and overlooking the bay, is dedicated to Europe's  most legendary maritime hero, Lord Nelson, and his love for Emma Hamilton.

Sir William Hamilton, Emma's cuckolded husband, was the British Ambassador to the Court of Naples at the outbreak of the Napoleonic wars. In order to meet Nelson in private, Emma bought a small villa from her friend, Queen Maria Carolina of Naples.

The outer walls are ochre and the interiors simple. Inside are some of the infamous nude statues of Emma, who had once been an artist's model. By the window is a plain writing desk with a chair constructed so that Nelson could sit in comfort despite his missing arm. In a clear plastic case is the letter his mistress wrote begging the King of Naples to come to the relief of the British Navy as its sailors starved and it ships lay damaged.

Nelson later said that Emma's intervention had saved England and this accounted for his hopeless and then scandalous passion.

Only one place rivals Sorrento  in the annals of romance and that is neighbouring Capri. Aristotle Onassis once said: 'If you can't seduce a woman on Capri, you are not a man.' This is where Onassis and Fiat supremo Gianni Agnelli took the young First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, in 1963.

Some historians claim Onassis's affair with Jackie began then and not after her husband's assassination. Capri, which is 20 minutes by hydrofoil from Sorrento, is like a jewel thrown up by a sea goddess. It has seduced everyone from the Emperor Tiberius, who had two villas here, to Noel Coward and Audrey Hepburn.

Reaching the main piazza, which equals St Mark's Square in Venice as the world's most beautiful drawing room, is still a vertiginous journey on the funicular railway. Once up in the piazza with its Roman columns, I wander through the streets, in which no cars are allowed, to the shop where Capri pants were first created in the early 1950s, and adopted by Hepburn during a break from filming Roman Holiday.

Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy would eat ice creams at a stall  that still exists off the piazza. The cones are made right in front of the customers, and it is a race to see how quickly you can lick them before the ice cream melts and runs on your clothes.

In the centre of Capri, where the dinky little shops close at midnight, there is the occasional nightmare of groups of day-trippers descending the narrow streets, squashing you like flies against the wall. But at the furthest point of the island  the shops cease and the Capri of the locals begins.

Above the famous Faraglioni Rocks is a place with a quietude and beauty that renders you speechless. Here Tiberius built his favourite villa, and, according to legend, sacrificed his good name in order to retire here. Soon gossips were saying that he chucked unwanted visitors over the cliff.

In 1943, General Eisenhower chose a villa on this site for  the American headquarters in southern Italy. The property is now a charming boutique hotel with an award-winning restaurant and panoramic views.

Indeed, the Hotel Punta Tragara is not so much a hotel with a view, as a view with a hotel. It seems an organic part of the island, verdant with its terraces and hanging gardens, at one with the Mediterranean. My room was once occupied by Winston Churchill. From the bed, I look out of the floor-to-ceiling windows on to the sea with its unmatchable colours that blend seamlessly around the rocks.

In the Le Monzu restaurant, which has an elegant simplicity and windows shaped like ship's portholes, I try a meltingly smooth pasta with octopus ragout, grilled fish with peas and mint, and a vanilla souffle that does not so much exist as shimmer.

The recipe was first created  for Jackie Kennedy, who refused to eat a pudding that was likely  to expand her waistline. In the morning, I go shopping for Capri pants and find that my waistline has also, miraculously, stayed  the same.

I pass a shop that sells music boxes made by local artisans. I buy one and I'm asked which tune I would like. I hesitate briefly before saying from the heart: 'Torna A Surriento.'