The Villa Comunale terrace over the bay

Sorrento is built on a tufa cliff, and the Villa Comunale is where the town leans over the edge of it. The garden is small — palms, benches, a church cloister next door — but it ends in a long stone balustrade with nothing in front of it except the bay, the ferries crossing, and Vesuvius sitting on the far shore.

The terrace faces north-east, which makes it a morning and evening place rather than a midday one. At sunrise the volcano is backlit and the water goes silver; in the evening the sun sets behind you over the Sorrentine peninsula and the whole opposite shore turns pink while your subjects are lit from the side. The balustrade itself is the composition: put two people against it and the horizon does the rest.

Everything here is free, open and step-free from the town centre, which makes it the most dependable spot in Sorrento for families and for anyone who cannot manage the stairs down to the marinas. It is popular at sunset with aperitivo crowds, but the terrace is long enough to find space. The cloister of San Francesco next door, with its interlaced arches and bougainvillea, is the natural second setting two minutes away.