The Museo Correale di Terranova is Sorrento's house-museum: an eighteenth-century villa left to the town by the Correale brothers, with a park running down towards the sea and a collection built up by a family rather than assembled by a curator.
It is the right place for a rainy half-day, or for the empty hour between lunch and sunset — and it is a little over ten minutes' walk from the B&B.
What you see
The collection tells the story of Sorrento and the Kingdom of Naples through the objects of the people who lived there: Capodimonte porcelain, glass, clocks, inlaid furniture, landscape paintings of the Posillipo School, decorative arts.
Two sections justify the visit on their own:
- The glass and porcelain on the ground floor, with one of the most complete Capodimonte collections in the region.
- Sorrentine marquetry, the craft that made the town famous in the nineteenth century: tables, caskets and panels in contrasting woods, made a few blocks from here.
A realistic visit takes an hour, an hour and a half if you stop to read the labels.
The park
The garden at the back deserves a stop of its own. It takes ten minutes to cross, between mature trees, and ends at a balustrade looking over the bay with Vesuvius opposite. It is one of the least crowded viewpoints in Sorrento, simply because you have to buy a museum ticket to reach it.
Go at the end of your visit, in the hour before closing, when the light is low.
Hours and tickets: check first
A practical warning here, because this is the mistake our guests make most often.
- The museum is closed on Mondays.
- It observes a seasonal winter closure: for part of the winter it does not open at all.
- Hours differ between weekdays and Sundays or public holidays.
The ticket is inexpensive and can be bought at the desk or online. Before you set out, check the hours and the opening period on the museum's official site: ten minutes' walk is not far, but finding the door shut is an avoidable annoyance.
Getting there from the B&B
On foot, a little over ten minutes: take via Correale and keep straight on, away from Piazza Tasso. The route is flat and stays within the built-up centre throughout.
Our advice
Combine it with a walk: the museum, then the park, then down towards the Villa Comunale gardens and the Cloister of San Francesco for sunset. That is two and a half hours of Sorrento, all on foot, without ever taking transport.
If you are travelling with children, be aware that this is a museum of objects in cases, with no interactive sections: it works well with curious teenagers, less so with small children.
Museo Correale park grounds