Created by the Tramontano family in a line of aristocratic villas on the sea – one the birthplace of Torquato Tasso – guests have included Lamartine, Byron, Scott, Shelley and, in 1829, the writer Fenimore Cooper. It was a “royal palace” of Europe: the future Edward VII came in 1862, and Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia and her retinue stayed for two months in 1871, receiving Victor Emmanuel II. Here her daughter, Grand Duchess Maria, was engaged to the Duke of Edinburgh, Ibsen put the finishing touches to Ghosts in 1881, and Turna a Surriento was sung for the first time in 1902 for the Italian premier Zanardelli.
A former eighteenth-century residence built on the ruins of the villa of Emperor Augustus’ adoptive son. The poet Lamartine stayed here in 1820, as did Louis II of Bavaria in 1853, Empress Eugenia, wife of Napoleon III, in 1868, and the Spanish president Castelar in 1875. King Paul of Greece and Victor Emanuel III both came in the early twentieth century. Marguerite Yourcenar wrote Coup de Grace here in 1938. In an elegant revisited nineteenth-century style and perched above the sea, it contains a wealth of art and antiques, with Roman grottoes and nymphaea on the way down to the beach.
Between the wars, Francesco Saverio Nitti, prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy, often used to come down with his family and soon became a good friend of the owners. This was a hotel for the aristocracy, who flocked from all over Europe to enjoy grand gala evenings on the terrace high above the sea, with the Gulf of Naples stretched out before them. Requisitioned during the war, like all the hotels in Sorrento, it was fixed up again after the 1980 earthquake. The interiors have twentieth-century lines and period furniture, but the buildings have lost none of their nineteenth-century charm.
