On my first evening in Sorrento, I sat at a small table on the pavement outside a bar and sipped on a beer. I wondered what the week would bring and watched the local people walking up and down the street. Then something strange started to happen. The people stopped walking up and down and instead began to congregate all along the edges of the pavements on both sides of the street. I stood and tried to see whether something was happening, but all I could see was an empty road stretching in both directions.
People started emerging from the buildings onto their little balconies and began to light candles. The shops and my bar all turned off their lights. I sat back down again, now unable to move from my little table even if I’d wanted to; the crowd was packed in tightly. Everyone was talking in hushed tones, highly unusual for Italians, and I just had to wait to see what would happen next.
After about twenty minutes of this, I finally thought that I could hear some sort of singing in the distance. It seemed that I could as when everyone else registered it, even the hushed tones were halted and everyone now stood in silence, with me seemingly the only person who still had no idea what we were waiting for.
Eventually, in the distance, what looked like the beginning of a procession came into view. The people leading it were all dressed in black with tall, pointed hoods over their heads; all of them were carrying candles. At first I could only see this leading group, then I realised that there were many more people behind them, each in groups of around twelve, all dressed in the same strange black garb, dozens and dozens of them.
Then there was a break in the sequence. A group of priests and or monks without hoods relieved the blackness of it all visually and also broke the silence as they began to sing, albeit a very solemn song that could only be of mourning. Behind them were more people in black, but this group were carrying something on a large platform above their heads. When it came into my view, the penny finally dropped.
I had quite forgotten that it was Good Friday; on the platform was a representation of Christ on the Cross and clearly this was a procession to mourn his death. Presumably it was an age old custom that I was witnessing and treated with a great deal of reverence by the locals.
The dozens turned into hundreds, all moving silently along between the equally, and almost eerily, silent crowds lining the pavements. Then there was another choir and another platform came into view behind it. On this one was a representation of the Virgin Mary weeping for her son; behind them there must have been at least another 10 groups of people in black until the whole thing finally came to an end. It must have taken a good twenty minutes to pass by. The crowds slowly dispersed, still subdued, and the electric lights were gradually turned back on.
The ‘black procession’, as it’s quite simply known, I found out later was indeed a very old tradition and the second of the day, the first inevitably being the ‘white procession’ which takes place in the early hours of Good Friday. For me it had been the most sombre procession I’d ever seen in my life, verging on weird. It was all those black pointed hats that made them look like Ku Klux Klan outfits in negative. Yet the atmosphere was tangibly one of genuine sorrow and amazingly powerful considering it was out in the street. I wasn’t sure whether I was glad I’d seen it or not, but it was certainly an unforgettable experience and quite an introduction to Sorrento.
The above photos of the procession are copyright of www.virtualsorrento.com
I was staying in a small but quite nice hotel at one end of the town, all of which clings around one very long road, the Corso Italia. This road cuts along the side of a steep hill that runs down towards the sea, and then stops abruptly to turn into fairly high cliffs. Most of the town is easily accessible from the Corso Italia, though travelling the whole length of it could take some considerable time in the rush hour. In the central part of the town, the narrow (and most interesting) cobbled streets that run off of it, towards the sea, are known locally, if not very romantically, as ‘the drains’.
The centre also boasts a main square, where there is a passably pretty church and lots of nice looking restaurants. In one direction, the Corso Italia leads to the main road to Naples, in the other to the pretty coastal road to Amalfi.
Part of the main square
After the unexpected introduction to Sorrento life, the following morning was much more conventionally touristy. I gathered with my fellow travellers outside the hotel, waiting for our guide to arrive, ready to go on what was described on our itinerary as a walking tour of the town. Our guide turned up, closely followed by a coach, which wiped the smile from the faces of those looking forward to a good walk. We all piled onto the coach and had our first meeting with our guide for the week, Adrian.
Adrian is without doubt someone that people refer to as a ‘character’. He has a way with words and strength of personality that make him naturally very entertaining – he doesn’t have to try. This made even the most mundane things – like his explanation of where the Sorrento banks were located – much less mundane; his commentaries on the local sights at times had us rolling in the aisles.
We set off through the town and before long the coach came to a halt in a small car park. We were to spend the rest of the morning being led around the back streets where we had coffee, tasted liqueurs and saw a demonstration of local decorative box-making. This was mostly interspersed with Adrian giving us practical advice and information about the rest of our trip. The morning concluded with an early lunch stop at a place called the Foreigners’ Club. This provoked both confusion and mirth from our group as we gathered on the Club’s empty terrace and someone asked where all the foreigners were. Adrian pointed out that we were the foreigners, which seems to be a difficult concept for some English holidaymakers to grasp when abroad.
I don’t know what the club was originally, perhaps a place for ex-pats to gather, or maybe there was some military connection, it certainly had that feel about it. The terrace was very pleasant however, perched on the top of the cliff that has fantastic views all around the Bay of Naples. We all found tables, had a leisurely lunch,
took photos of the bay and enjoyed the pleasant April sunshine.
View from the terrace
Sometime during this, Adrian disappeared having told us to find our own way back to the hotel. This was easy enough as long as your sense of direction didn’t completely desert you, and I wandered slowly through the little back streets, taking photos as I went, until my path inevitably crossed the Corso Italia and I returned to the hotel for a brief comfort break.
As I was now at this end of the town, I had heard Adrian saying earlier that there was a little path quite near to the hotel that led to the route down to the harbour. As this was one of only two free afternoons, I decided that this would be a good place to start my explorations. The path was quite short and led down to a fairly steep and curving road with no pavement which was indeed the only road down to the harbour. There seemed to be quite a few lorries going up and down it which meant that pedestrians had to stop quite regularly to let them safely pass. This resulted in me catching up and joining a little crocodile of pedestrians working their way down to the harbour – by the time we reached it there must have been about twenty of us, an impromptu mixture of locals and tourists.
Fortunately we all seemed to want to go in different directions when we got to the bottom of the hill, and I headed along a path that took me past some water-side restaurants. They didn’t look that salubrious, but Adrian had told us that they served the best and most authentic seafood dishes in the area should we feel tempted for a change from what the hotel had to offer. I continued along this small road until it came to a dead end, unable to conquer the double challenge of cliffs and sea.
Sorrento Harbour
I turned back and was soon by the main part of the little harbour which boasted a narrow wooden jetty, some boat houses, a tiny fleet of fishing boats and a small, dowdy beach that lent itself more readily to boat repairing than sun bathing. Even from here, the view across the bay was still quite captivating, with an island that I couldn’t identify shimmering in the hazy distance. I’d been hoping that the harbour would have more to offer somehow, but it didn’t, so I began to set off back towards the road. It was then that I noticed a footpath that appeared to wind its way up the cliff and into some trees that became denser towards the top.
I felt pretty confident that getting lost in Sorrento would be nearly impossible, so decided to take the path and see where it led me. As I began to climb it, the view started to become more spectacular again until the trees began to obscure it. The path then levelled out and turned into a small road with a series of villas on the side that overlooked the sea. I kept stopping and peering through their gates and fences and could see that they were pretty expensive and luxurious affairs, and couldn’t help wondering who might own them. A lot of the flowering trees were in early spring bloom, which added to the overall very pleasant effect of this little, but exclusive street.
One of the villas
Before long I was back in ‘the drains’, the little network of criss-cross streets that run off the Corso Italia and provide much more typical vistas of everyday Italian life, also managing to be very attractive in their own way. This had been a very relaxing and peaceful amble around Sorrento, and though I probably didn’t, I already felt as though I knew the town pretty well. Thanks to Adrian, I also now knew that the town’s name is based on the legend of the sirens, the mythical ladies who lured ships onto the rocks, but now seem to have turned their attention to tourists instead.
Copyright 2007