Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria

What the classifiers highlight

Legend places Emperor Augustus's summer villa on this clifftop site above Sorrento's Piazza Tasso, where this hotel now marks 190 years in business, its 81 rooms spread across three buildings and five acres of parkland. Forbes counts four stars. Terrazza Vittoria, the walled garden restaurant, looks toward Vesuvius past a row of classical busts.