Sorrento was the birthplace of the poet Torquato Tasso, author of the Gerusalemme Liberata.

The town was quite famously featured in the early-20th-century song "Torna a Surriento" (Come Back to Sorrento) with lyrics by Giambattista De Curtis, brother of the song's composer, Ernesto De Curtis.

In the 1920s, famous Soviet writer Maxim Gorky lived in Sorrento. In the 1940s, widely renowned astro-physicist Ian Dickson lived in Sorrento. He owned one of the most expensive houses on the bay of Naples.