Is Sorrento family-friendly?

Stroller verdict. Corso Italia is fine but most of the rest is hard going. The flat walk from Piazza Tasso to Piazza Sant'Antonino takes about 10 minutes, and on summer evenings Corso Italia is often closed to cars, which is when Sorrento families come out with scooters buzzing past the end of each side street. Marina Piccola, where the Capri and Naples ferries leave from, sits about 50 m below town, and the public lift in the Villa Comunale gardens takes you down for roughly a euro, so you can skip the switchback steps. Bring a carrier for Via San Cesareo: at noon the lane is so tight that a pushchair wheel catches on the shop baskets of waxy, sharp-smelling lemons. The Circumvesuviana train is the bigger problem, with carriages standing-room only from June to September, some with no air conditioning, and stairs at most stations. SITA buses on the Amalfi Coast road have no space for strollers, and the hairpin bends can make a carsick 6-year-old ill within 20 minutes. While the seasonal ferries run, roughly April to early November, the boat to Positano is the kinder choice.

A day that works with kids under 8. Morning adventure first. Take the Circumvesuviana to Ercolano Scavi, about 50 minutes, then walk 600 m downhill to Herculaneum: it is a fraction of the size of Pompeii, the houses still have charred wooden beams and cool mosaic floors, and a 7-year-old can see most of it in two hours. Under-18s get into Italian state sites free. Then lunch and a nap. Aim to be back in Sorrento by 1 pm for pizza margherita or gnocchi alla sorrentina, baked with tomato and stringy mozzarella, because nearly every kitchen around Via Fuoro makes it and nearly every child eats it. The afternoon stays gentle. I Giardini di Cataldo on Corso Italia has a shaded lemon-grove pergola and free tastings of lemon granita that is cold enough to hurt your teeth, and Gelateria Primavera is a few minutes away on the same street. Finish at the Villa Comunale terrace at sunset, when Vesuvius goes purple across the Bay of Naples.

Skip this list. Skip Pompeii in July or August with children under 6: the site covers 66 hectares of rutted basalt paving with little shade and few toilets, so if you do go, cap the visit at two hours and pick out three houses in advance. Skip the Blue Grotto on Capri with children under 5, where you queue in open boats under full sun, sometimes for an hour, then everyone lies flat in a rowboat to get through the opening, and it closes whenever the swell picks up. The Bagni della Regina Giovanna look great in photos, but getting there means a 20-minute walk down a steep path onto hot rocks, with no café, no changing table and no shade. The Vesuvius crater trail is about 30 minutes uphill on loose gravel: kids 6 and up handle it fine, but with a baby in a carrier it is tiring, and the wind at the rim can be cold even in June.

Beds and beaches. Many Sorrento "family rooms" turn out to be a double bed plus a sofa bed, so ask for a camera quadrupla with letto matrimoniale e due letti singoli and get the cot (culla) confirmed in writing. Stay within a 10-minute walk of Piazza Tasso: hotels on Via del Capo or up in Sant'Agnello look close on a map, but you reach them by a steep road with no pavement. Apartments in the centro storico often come with a washing machine and a two-ring kitchen. The lidos at Marina Piccola and Marina Grande are wooden platforms over deep water with ladders down, suiting confident swimmers aged 8 and up, but parents of toddlers will spend the day on edge. Marina Grande's small strip of pebbles is the nearest thing to a toddler beach, though the boats there smell of diesel and drying nets. For allergies, EU rules require restaurants to tell you about 14 listed allergens on request, and "senza glutine" is widely understood.