3 Best Sights in Sorrento and the Sorrentine Peninsula, Italy

Gracing Piazza Sant'Antonino and one of the largest churches in Sorrento, the Basilica di Sant'Antonino honors the city's patron saint, St. Anthony the Abbot. The church and the portal on the right side date from the 11th century. Its nave and side aisles are divided by recycled ancient columns. A painting on the nave ceiling is signed and dated by Giovan Battista Lama in 1734. The crypt, housing the saint’s bones, is enriched by polychrome marble and votive offerings. In addition, a relic case contains two whale ribs, which commemorates one of the saint’s miracles, when he saved a child from the cetacean. Directly opposite across the piazza is the turn-of-the-20th-century Municipio (town hall).

Ancient, but rebuilt from the 15th-century right up to 1924, the town's cathedral follows a Latin-cross design; its nave and two side aisles are divided by thick piers with round arches. A Renaissance-style door and artworks, including the archbishop's 16th-century marble throne and ceiling paintings attributed to the 18th-century Neapolitan school, are easily viewable. Twentieth-century marquetry ornaments the choir stalls with representations of the Stations of the Cross. Torquato Tasso, Sorrento's most famous native son, was baptized here in the 16th century (probably at the front in the first chapel on the right). The delightfully florid three-story campanile, topped by a clock and a belfry, has an open, arcaded base and recycled Roman columns.

Today's travelers head to Sant'Agata less for the sublime beauties of Il Deserto than for its lodging options and to dine at Don Alfonso 1890, one of the finest restaurants in Campania. Across the way from Don Alfonso on the town square is the beautiful 16th-century Renaissance church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The shadowy, evocative interior features an exceptional 17th-century altar brought from the Girolamini church in Naples in 1843. Attributed to Florentine artists, it's inlaid with lapis, malachite, mother-of-pearl, and polychrome marble.