Basilica of Sant’Antonino, Sorrento

Basilica of Sant'Antonino, Sorrento tickets: which one to buy

The basilica is free to enter and there is no ticket for any part of it, including the crypt. Sorrento is small and the church stands on its own square a few minutes from Piazza Tasso, so nothing needs arranging. Walking tours of the old town include it and cost a moderate amount; they usually add the cathedral, the cloister of San Francesco and the Correale museum. Nothing needs booking.

The feast of Sant'Antonino on 14 February is the town's patronal festival and the one day the basilica is full. Votive offerings left by sailors are displayed in the crypt, which is the part of the church most visitors remember and which is entered by stairs beside the altar. Donations left at the crypt altar go to the parish, which maintains the votive collection.

Visiting Basilica of Sant'Antonino, Sorrento: what to see

Antoninus, an abbot who fled Monte Cassino when the Lombards sacked it and settled near Sorrento, died in 625 and became the town's patron; he is credited with saving a child swallowed by a whale, which is why two whale bones hang in the porch. The basilica was built over an earlier oratory in the eleventh century and altered repeatedly, so the interior is baroque over a Romanesque frame, with columns taken from Roman buildings along the coast. The ceiling carries eighteenth-century paintings of the saint's miracles.

The crypt below holds his relics, a marble altar and walls covered in small painted panels and silver ex-votos given by sailors and fishermen who survived storms, a dense and moving record of a town that lived from the sea. A large Neapolitan nativity scene stands in a side chapel year-round. The wooden ceiling of the nave was repainted in the eighteenth century and the columns beneath it came from Roman villas along the Sorrentine coast. The two whale ribs hanging in the porch are the town's oldest joke and its oldest relic, and nobody agrees which animal they came from.

Basilica of Sant'Antonino, Sorrento opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from morning to evening with a break in the middle of the day, and closing for mass. Sorrento is crowded from April to October, when the town handles the Amalfi and Capri day-trip traffic; the basilica is quiet even then. February brings the patronal feast with processions and street food. The crypt is cool and dimly lit. Dress modestly, which in a seaside town means covering swimwear. Photography is allowed.

Allow twenty-five minutes. The cloister of San Francesco with its interlaced arches is five minutes away and free, and the terrace above the Marina Grande gives the view across the bay to Vesuvius. Sorrento's Marina Grande and the walk down to it are five minutes from the basilica square. The square in front has a handful of cafes and is one of the quieter corners of a town that is otherwise full from Easter onwards.