Fodor's Expert Review Piazza della Vittoria

Tree-shaded Piazza della Vittoria is book-ended by two fabled hotels, the Bellevue Syrene and the Imperial Hotel Tramontano, one wing of which was home to famed 16th-century writer Torquato Tasso. Set by the bayside balcony, the facade of the Casa di Tasso is all the more exquisite for its simplicity and seems little changed since his day. The poet's house originally belonged to the Rossi family, into which Tasso's mother married, and was adorned with beautiful gardens (Tasso wove gardens into many of his poems). The piazza itself is supposedly the site where a temple to Venus once stood, and the scattered Roman ruins make it a real possibility.