Storia di Sorrento : Dalle origini di Sorrento

The etimo of Sorrento, according to the archaeologist Paola Zancani Montuoro, it would not be referable to the myth of the sirens, but it would derive from the Greek verb “surreo”, that means “I compete”, “I flow together” or also “I meet”. In this case the toponimo would perfectly correspond sorrentino to the morphology of the costone, endowed with two courses of water that lead in sea distinguished and distant, circonvallando the city.

Sorrento is found to the center of an inhabited region since the Neolitico. The archaeological finds guarded partly in the Museum Correale and partly to Villa Funds, in the Museum Gorge Vallet, to Plain of Sorrento, I am the testimony of the presence of inhabited centers both in the hill and in the lowland in age eneolitica (graves of the Civilization of the Gaudo).

The plant of the ancient Surrentum
The archaeological excavations have reconstructed a plant with eight hinges and eight decumanis of rectangular form with the principal axle directed in sense east-west, encircled from from boundaries. The principal aces in sense east-west was constituted from the roads of street Pity, street St. Caesarian and street Fuoro, vico II Tasso, street St. Paul and Imperial street of Russia; the aces road north-south they corresponded II Pietà and vico of the Graces to the actual vicos, street Archpriest, Road Rate and street Parsano, vico Fuoro, vico II Fuoro, street of the Tightened her/it, street Above the boundaries, Road of Sant'Antonino.
Near the Door Parsanos are visible the rests risalenti to the IV - II century a.C; also on the Course Italy, in the Villa Florentine, ancient vestigia is been recovered.

The ancient history of Sorrento is rebuildable in base is to the archaeological data is to the manifold ancient sources even if often fragmentary and of difficulty interpretation.

The origins of Sorrento, in fact, are controversial for the researchers: according to the Beloch the origin was of sure Greek fret while the Huxley, founding himself/herself/itself on fragments of Stesicoro, he/she preferred to point out an origin etrusca. This doubleness of thesis springs from the texts to disposition and that they offer the side to the various interpretative positions even if recently he slants for reaffirming the optic calcidese (Greek origin).

According to the tradition, risalente to the Sicilian historian Timeo, was a king Ausone the most ancient king in the zone. This affirmation finds comparison in the story of Diodoro… you narrates that Liparos, child of Auson, chased by his/her earth you/he/she was sheltered to Lipari and a city founded you. Few years later Aiolos landed you that married Kjane the daughter of Aiolos. Become old, expressed Aialos the desire to see his/her earth again and, helped by Liparos, it reached Sorrrento and it became the king of it. Here, after the death it had a pompous burial worthy of his/her lineage that the Sorrentinis wanted to render him for his/her hospitality and kind ways..
Few are the news immediately handed down us for the following epoches, probably because, belonging to the league nocerina, Sorrento you/he/she could not beat coin. You knows that it was subdued to Syracuse for a brief period (sec. V), it passed then to the Sannitis and therefore to the Romans. In imperial age, among the age of Caesar and that of Adriano, Sorrento is famous and you/he/she is quoted by various authors because the Roman patricians were attracted by the mild climate and they handled to have a lot of maritime villaes to build along the coast. We remember, for instance, Villa Pollio Felice in the Head of Sorrento and the Villa of Agrippa Postumo, under the actual Hotel Syrene. The villa was made to build from the unlucky nephew of August. Currently he can see only some ruins of the peschieres. The villa belonged to a vast monumental complex that was englobed then in the monastery of St. Paul.

Sorrento in the medieval age
Occupied by the Goths, from the Longobardis and from the Byzantines (552), it was erect to Dukedom under Sergio I. After having suffered a vain siege of the prince of Benevento Siccardo (835), during the IX century was threatened from Amalfi that you/he/she had stopped belonging to the dukedom in Naples and it involved from independent power. In 1039 you/he/she was conquered by Guaimario V that he/she left her/it nevertheless in seed-free condition. In 1137 it finally fell under the dominion of the Norman ones.
Sorrento godette of a greater autonomy in comparison to the other towns, in fact you/he/she was not given in feud to some noble and even if had to abdicate the political independence, you/he/she could preserve the aristocratic privileges and the control of the hamlets of Mass, Plan and Vico. To the beginning of the sec. XIV (perhaps in 1319) in the period angioino, nobility divided him in two Seats (or Plazas), with the constitution, in opposition to the native Seat of Door, of the Seat of Dominova. The prestige of the Seats of Sorrento was notable so much to contend, in the Spanish period, some privileges in the same capital, Naples. They separately gathered him to elect his/her own representatives in the Suggestion of the city, of which it also made part a minority elected by her/it “the people Plaza”. The Suggestion was formed at judges with specific charges and was driven at an executive of three mayors (one for Plaza) coadiuvato, in Spanish epoch, from some collaborators (the chosen). The mayors also presided the city parliament and they effected the deliberations of it.
The university, that is the administrative organ of the community sorrentina, drew the necessary economic means to the fiscal payments to the State, to the expenses of management and the public works, from the indirect taxation of the groceries (excises), of the working activities (the collections) and of the immovable good (the inventory). Of the three sectors of the revenue, the first one was the more main point and it founded him on the excise of the flour.
Very intense it was the maritime traffic between Sorrento and the various harbors of the Gulf of Naples and the Midday. The dealt products were: fruit, wine, oil, meat and by-products of the milk.
The most conspicuous incomes were appanage of the noble families and the clergy.

Sorrento in the modern age
Sorrento suffered a serious hit from the invasion of the Turks that they ransacked her/it and they devastated in 1558.
The first consequence of the attack of the pirates was the fortification of the entourage of the boundaries and the construction of the coastal towers, that are already in the past been ordered by the King but you ever realize.
In that period long they were the struggles sustained by the country populations of the Casali and the neighboring countries, had been submitting for centuries to the soprusis of the patrician sorrentinis, to get the autonomy.. there was an economic stagnation determined partly dall impoverishment of the resources and from the effects of the Spanish fiscal pressure. And' in this context that places the revolt of the Genoese Giovanni Grillo (1648). Exploiting a series of secular contrasts with the local nobility, the Cricket he/she succeeded in uniting the canters of the Plan and the farmers of the same Sorrento driving a fruitless siege that lasted 14 months.

In the age of the Controriforma the artistic and social life of the city "patrician" it decayed. Various academies rose and they spread innumerable monastic orders, so much to be given a marked conventual imprint to Sorrento.
In 1799 the town stuck to the Republic Partenopea. In the provisional government established by the Giacobinis to govern the Neapolitan besides the city massese Bozzaotra it also found place an exponent of the Peninsula Sorrentina, Nicola Fasulo. The insurrection involved some sacrifices for the Sorrentinis even if not all were favorable to the diffusion of the new ideas of liberty. It was favorite, really for this last attitude of refusal from the inhabitants, the work of the reactionaries that involved a return of the Borbonis on the throne in Naples. In the month of April, in fact, the ships English and borboniche disembarked troops in Peninsula, for a rapids conquest of the lost cities. The army French, meanwhile, it marched toward the Kingdom in Naples. The Countries of the Peninsula, faithful to the Borbonis, they opposed him to the advance that therefore it stopped him to Castellammare. French, after having conquered Vico, they besieged Sorrento. The Sorrentinis didn't surrender him, rather they killed a French soldier and they hurt an officer. To these events the general ordered the taking of the city that was avoided only thanks to archbishop Monsignore Pepper's intervention which introduced him with a picture of the Rate settling the Fastis of Sorrento, and sustaining that the country of a writer could not be destroyed so famoso.I French, before departing from Sorrento, they destroyed part of the Castle that delimited the boundaries of border and defense of the city. To the departure of the general Mcdonald, the Borbonis helped by the army of the cardinal Ruffo, subdued Naples and the cities of the coastline among which Sorrento.

Sorrento in the contemporary age
In the first period borbonico he went intensifying the activity marinara and the fishing of the tuna, flourishing up to the beginnings of the sec. XX. In 1805, the peninsula and the whole Kingdom in Naples you/he/she was submitted to the French attack in qunato Ferdinando IV it joined him Austria and Russia against the new dawning star, Napoleone. In the 1806 Ferdinando it was outcast from Naples and on the throne first Joseph Bonaparte he installed, brother of Napoleone, subsequently Gioacchino Murat. Between French and nobility sorrentina the relationships were tense and the five Casali (Destination, Sant'Agostino, Carotto, Anchor and Maiano) they asked and they got (1809) the administrative autonomy. The noble Seats of Sorrento were abolished.
The Peninsula had to suffer the presence of French that you/they were maintained by the humblest classes. The English were always present along the coast and they tried more times to conquer Mass, Destination and Capri. Murat, having assisted from Mass to the war operations and having ascertained the incumbent danger, it ordered the construction works of fortification of the coastal sorrentino.Nel 1815, with the defeat of Waterloo, to Naples he/she returned the Borbone Ferdinando that it assumed the title of Ferdinando I king of the Two Sicilies. With the return of the Borbonis the Peninsula found again the peace and they took back the commercial activities. It began, infatti,un florid period for agriculture, cantieristica, craftsmanship, tourism.
1832 is one important year for Sorrento because Ferdinando II of Borbone decreed the construction
of the road Castellammare-destination that was finished in 1834. The work was a very ancient demand because to reach by land Sorrento meant to cross a path that climbed him on the mountain of Vico up to come to Wash her/it, uncomfortable and dangerous also for the most experienced coachmen.
In 1837 the cholera spread to Sorrento and the Cemetery was built for the colerosis.

The city Decurionato in the reunion of September 29 th 1840 gave start to the transformation of Sorrento with it deliberates her to demolish the castle of the 1459 site to the entry of the city, where today Rate Plaza is. They also started him interventions on the Vallone of the Mills upsetting the preexisting equilibriums melting the center with the suburb and activating so the expansion of the urbanization out of the surrounded building risalente to the period of the viceroy.

The Risorgimento also lives with great share from the Sorrentinis and many they were those people that participated in the struggles for the independence
After the unity S. Agnello made him autonomous (1865), while Sorrento suffered the "building improvement" that it changed the ancient aspect of it. The ancient Roman urban plant, that of the thistle and of the decumano, was distorted from the construction of a new road, the actual Course Italy (1866). You road was the only one to have sidewalks where well soon the buildings of the rich ones and the shops of luxury were lined up.

In 1898 the electric net was inaugurated and in the 1899 Sorrrento and the other Communes of the Peninsula they formed a consortium and they approved the project and the Statute for the construction of a line electric tramviaria. The service became definitive in 1906. The tram connection began to Castellammare and finished to Sorrento, in Market plaza, it developed him on a binary solo and the trip it was always full of question marks for the sudden lack of the tide.
Meanwhile, to Sorrento, manifold they were the initiated demolitions in the eight hundred as that realized in the 1912 of the Door of the Marina of Head Buck (the actual Marina Piccola). It was dejected to leave space to a double tornante carrabile that buried the ancient staircase and big part of the houses of the fishermen to effect the realization of the I bring.

The Nine hundred first ventennio also saw the sorrentinis depart for the Great War and mourning and pain it involved whole families. In the fascist period the Communes were reunited in only denominated Commune Sorrento, but the center of the Town hall was fixed in Sant'Agnello. Á. the fall of the Fascism the Communes were detached by Sorrento having gotten the autonomy.
In 1948 it was abolished the line tramviaria and that railway was used exclusively built in 1943.
In the years sixty Sorrentos have had some notable urbanistic changes, new roads are been built and you/he/she are increased the cementificazione of the town.