If a place or a building makes you think of a dream, this is the Imperial Hotel Tramontano in Sorrento, both for the wonderful view of the gulf that can be enjoyed from its terraces, and for the magic and history of this ancient house that has welcomed its guests since 1812, making them feel completely at ease, in a setting of serenity.

The hotel is a balcony overlooking the sea from which you can admire Vesuvius in the distance, the dark tops of the centuries-old trees towering over the walls of the villas and, down below, the overhanging rocks, the dark caves of the tuff wall: a place not for those in a hurry, but for poets and people capable of contemplating nature.

To retrace the history of the Hotel Tramontano, it is necessary to refer to the events of the Tramontano family, so rich in moments of glory and splendor, from which the Hotel took and retains its name.

The pioneer was Pasquale Tramontano, who came to Sorrento from the nearby Tramonti, a small village in the Amalfi hinterland and, at the beginning of the 19th century, opened the small hotel “Corona di Ferro” in Via S. Cesareo n.9, a simple inn, but very well kept and frequented by General Guglielmo Pepe, such a dear friend of the Tramontanos that he christened their first son who was also given the name of Guglielmo.

Guglielmo I Tramontano, who we will call this to distinguish him from a second Guglielmo, continued his father’s business by transferring the Hotel to Villa Nardi (“La Terrazza”),

a building that he then connected to the nearby Villa Strongoli Pignatelli through a beautiful garden overlooking the sea owned by the municipality. Later, since the lease of the garden was not renewed, Guglielmo left Villa Nardi which remained isolated and so he built a central body. From that moment it was all a catwalk of illustrious guests. In 1862, the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VII, spent a holiday here; Prince Frederick and Princess Victoria of Prussia also came, and in 1868 the Queen of Denmark. Harriet Becker Store, author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, was inspired by these places for the novel “Agnes of Sorrento”. The most important year, however, was 1871, when Tsarina Maria Alexandrova, wife of Tsar Alexander II, arrived in Sorrento on March 22. She stayed at the Hotel Tramontano with her entourage of about two hundred people, until May 11, receiving visits from illustrious guests such as: Vittorio Emanuele II, the King of England, Prince Nicholas of Montenegro.

During this long stay, the engagement between the Grand Duchess Maria of Russia and the Duke of Edinburgh was announced. For this event, the Hotel Tramontano was given the nickname “Imperial”. The parade of guests continues: Queen Olga of Wunterberger (1874), Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia with his wife (1878), Agostino De Pretis, Cardinal Memillod, Princes Leopold and Alexander of Prussia (1888), the future King Victor Emmanuel III, the Grand Duchess of Meeleburg (1891), the former Queen Natalia of Serbia (1894), Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (1904), Ena of Battenberg, future Queen of Spain (April 1905), Prince Ernest Regent of Saxony. Finally, we must add the men of letters and artists: Goethe, Byron, Scott, Shelley, the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen. These were also periods of long holidays in Sorrento “in the villa”. In this regard, I like to remember the writer Matilde Serao (founder with her husband Edoardo Scarfoglio of the Corriere di Roma first, in 1885 and then of the Mattino in 1892) who in the summer of 1881 was in a villa in the countryside that she describes in detail in her novel “Cuore infermo”.

I quote a piece of news about the Hotel Tramontano:<<[Beatrice] knew that in Sorrento the noisy social life of the aristocracy does not completely cease, but the feverish activity decreases. There is always the “Stabia Hall” in Castellammare, always the rooms of the “Tramontano” hotel in Sorrento, where people often dance; but it is a villa dance, in a short muslin dress and hat, covered in flowers: it ends at midnight, and people go to bed at a modest hour.” (taken from the book Upon the death of William I, on November 9, 1884, the management of the hotel was succeeded by his son William, who we will call “second”, a bearded giant who, also dedicating himself to politics, was mayor of Sorrento for over a decade, neglecting his business, according to his heirs. In his capacity as mayor, he invited the Head of Government Giuseppe Zanardelli to the peninsula, who was traveling to Basilicata. The Prime Minister arrived at the Hotel Tramontano on September 15, 1902, welcomed by a celebrating town and the sound of triumphal marches, and took part in the splendid lunch organized in his honor at the hotel.

The purpose of the invitation was to obtain a post office for Sorrento; the town in fact lacked several public facilities. With this request, it seems that Guglielmo Tramontano annoyed Zanardelli, a guest at his hotel, so many times that he finally received an abrupt dismissal and only vague promises. Don Guglielmo, however, did not lose heart and while wandering around the hotel, he expressed his concern to Giambattista De Curtis. This man, a poet, painter, musician, resided with the Tramontano family as tutor to their children and often enjoyed decorating walls and ceilings by gluing strips of paper painted in the Liberty style, a technique that, as one can easily imagine, led to the destruction of the works. One room in particular, at Guglielmo’s request, was decorated by De CURTIS in homage to the Norwegian playwright Ibsen who had stayed there for six months in 1881, during which he completed the final draft of the work “Ghosts”. Of this remains a letter that Ibsen sent to the philosopher Hegel and his reply dated 1881. The painter’s choice fell on ethereal and pale female figures, so distressing that the customers did not want to sleep there anymore; so, De Curtis was forced to remove them. Before returning to the subject of the post office, it is worth remembering a dear friend of Henrik Ibsen, namely: Edvard Grieg, considered the greatest Norwegian composer and pianist, known for the incidental music of Ibsen’s opera, “Peer Gynt”. He stayed at the Hotel Tramontano in 1869 and 1884. The Nocturne, Op 54 n4 expresses the composer’s feelings of a sweet evening spent with the spectacle of Vesuvius in front of him against the starry sky. Grieg then set those impressions to music during the cold and rainy summer of 1891 in Troldhaungen, ardently longing for the summer nights of Sorrento. Returning to the issue of the post office, De Curtis had the idea of ​​offering President Zanardelli a song: the very famous “Torna A Surriento” was sung for the first time that evening in the hotel. Zanardelli showed that he had greatly appreciated the homage and for this reason he promised the long-awaited post office.

The concession arrived in 1904, four months after his death. It was during this period, more precisely in 1951, that Walt Disney stayed at the Hotel Tramontano, arriving on a scheduled motor ship shortly after ten o’clock on Tuesday 30 July, got into a taxi and reached the Imperial Hotel TRAMONTANO “where, in their name, two interconnecting rooms had been booked and, above all, with a breathtaking view. The owners of the hotel, the Tramontano brothers, were perfectly aware of the identity of the guest and could not hide a certain emotion. One of the Tramontano brothers confirmed, in perfect English, that right there, in that hotel, about half a century earlier, the famous song had been christened, the one that Mister Disney must have been referring to in the press conference: “Torna A Surriento”. Walt Disney smiled. Upon the death of William II, his children Torquato and Giulia ran the hotel until 1959 when it was sold to Luigi Iaccarino, former mayor of Massalubrense and deputy mayor of Sorrento with Achille Lauro. Luigi was the son of Alfonso Costanzo Iaccarino, the one to whom Silvio Salvatore Gargiulo, aka “Saltovar”, a poet and prominent figure from Sorrento, had dedicated a poem that paid homage to him for having created the famous dish of: “CANNELLONI”. This is how the recipe goes: “Here is the rule of his convent: roll out the dough with feeling. Make a pettola with butter and eggs, beat it, beat it again, roll it out and try! Cut it into cubes, make cannoli… And inside you put meat and ham and bread and crumbs, lactated or dry. Together add eggs, a blender, grated biblical cheese. They are ready: place them in the cake pan and pour broth of real meat and liquid butter like gold with pink tomato sauce… And make a toast of pure wine with the great, famous Don Alfonsino! After Luigi Iaccarino passed away in February 1997, the Imperial Hotel Tramontano continued its activity with his son Costanzo and his children Francesca and Luigi. Luigi told them stories of the period in which the leading politicians of those years came to the hotel, and among these, how he often went to pick them up directly at the Naples train station, if not even as far as Rome.

Today the Imperial Hotel Tramontano continues to be a place of meetings, conferences and meetings also for celebrities, as well as a destination for tourists from all over the world. This is because, while maintaining the charm of the ancient residence unchanged, it boasts modern services and rooms revisited in an intelligent and refined way. The garden also deserves a small description for its centuries-old trees, rare plants such as the “Yucca Alaifolia marginata”, “African Aloe”, the “Phoenix Camarieusis”, the “Madrone” tree and the “Abbot”