In the water & diving
43 places
In the water & divingParco Sommerso di Baia
Bacoli
A Roman city swallowed by the sea through bradyseism: mosaics, columns and statues visited from a glass-bottomed boat or with a mask.
In the water & divingGrotta Azzurra
Anacapri
You enter lying flat in a small rowing boat through a low cleft, and inside the water lights up in a luminous blue that seems to rise from the depths.
- In the water & diving
Grotta Bianca
Capri
Pale limestone walls in a two-chambered cavity hollowed out by the sea, once a shelter for boats and a hiding place from pirate raids.
In the water & divingVerde
Capri
The water turns emerald green where light filters in through a submerged opening, and at the far end a small pebble beach lies hidden.
- In the water & diving
Meravigliosa
Capri
A stairway carved into the rock leads to a vault thick with stalactites and stalagmites, suspended above the Grotta Bianca and the island's thousand-year-old strata.
- In the water & diving
Punta Pizzaco e Solchiaro (snorkeling)
Procida
On the southern side, between the cliffs of Solchiaro and the walls of Pizzaco, clear water and rocky seabeds invite you to swim with a mask, far from the crowds.
- In the water & diving
Parco Sommerso di Aenaria
baia di Cartaromana
Beneath the bay of Cartaromana lie the remains of the ancient Roman port of Aenaria: you explore them from a glass-bottomed boat or with a mask, among amphorae and submerged structures.
- In the water & diving
Siti diving AMP Regno di Nettuno (Formiche di Vivara, Parete di Sant'Angelo, Scoglio della Nave, Secca del Bell'Ommo, Mezzatorre)
Ischia/Procida
The seabeds of the Regno di Nettuno marine protected area, among the shoals and walls off Vivara and Sant'Angelo, where gorgonians and shoals of fish move through the clear water.
- In the water & diving
AMP Castellabate — snorkeling e diving
Castellabate
In the marine protected area the posidonia meadows shelter groupers and sea bream, a transparent seabed to explore with fins on among rocks and submerged caves.
In the water & divingGrotta dello Smeraldo
Conca dei Marini (SA)
At Conca dei Marini you descend toward water that filters the light and gives it back emerald green, suspended between stalactites and a submerged presepe (nativity scene).
In the water & divingParco della Gaiola
Napoli (NA)
Below Posillipo, two islets linked by a fragile bridge: the Gaiola marine protected area, with submerged Roman ruins, transparent waters and the whispered fame of a cursed island.
- In the water & diving
Baia di Sorgeto
Forio (NA)
On Ischia, where boiling thermal springs gush among the rocks and mingle with the sea, the bay of Sorgeto offers a warm bath even in winter, under the stars.
- In the water & diving
Fonte di Nitrodi
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
Water that gushes warm among the rocks as it did two thousand years ago, when the Romans offered it to the nymphs: here the skin finds its calm.
- In the water & diving
Fonte delle Ninfe Nitrodi
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
A garden of springs where waters once dear to Apollo and the nymphs flow, among olive trees and open-air pools, far from the sound of the sea below.
- In the water & diving
Terme di Cavascura
Barano d'Ischia (NA)
In a gorge carved into the rock, pools and grottoes used since antiquity: you descend a canyon to plunge into scalding waters gushing from the mountain.
- In the water & diving
Parco Termale Negombo
Lacco Ameno (NA)
A botanical garden descending to the bay of San Montano, with thermal pools hidden among rare plants, artworks and the blue of the sea.
- In the water & diving
Parco Termale Poseidon
Forio (NA)
On the bay of Citara dozens of pools at different temperatures face the sea, among flowering terraces and the sunset that sets the water of Forio ablaze.
- In the water & diving
Cala di Mitigliano
Massa Lubrense (NA)
You walk down among olive trees and scrub to a pebble cove facing Capri, where the water is so clear the seabed blurs into the sky.
- In the water & diving
Terme di Villamaina (San Teodoro)
Villamaina (AV)
In the Ansanto valley, where the earth still exhales sulphur, the sulphurous water of San Teodoro springs forth: thermal sources known for centuries, among muds, caves and warm vapours.
- In the water & diving
Terme di Sinuessa
Mondragone (CE)
At the foot of Monte Petrino flow the sulphurous waters the Romans called Aquae Sinuessanae, beside a city largely swallowed by the sea.
- In the water & diving
Terme di Contursi
Contursi Terme (SA)
Along the Sele flow hot, sulphurous springs, exploited for centuries: steaming pools in the countryside where you soak under the open sky.
- In the water & diving
Chianare di Spadera
Forio (NA)
A coast of smooth flagstones and tiny coves below Punta Chiarito, where the tufo (volcanic tuff) splits into natural steps. Just above, archaeologists found a Greek farmstead buried by a landslide in the 6th century BC: the people fled and never came back.
- In the water & diving
Sorgenti di Cassano Irpino (Bagno della Regina)
Cassano Irpino (AV)
This is kilometre zero of the Acquedotto Pugliese: from here 1,800 litres a second set off through tunnels to quench the thirst of four regions. The Bagno della Regina takes its name from a Lombard princess who, enchanted by this water, bathed in it.
- In the water & diving
Cascate del Troncone e della Scorzella
Montella (AV)
Waterfalls hidden in the green of the Terminio, where the stream comes down in steps and the light struggles through the beeches.
- In the water & diving
Cascata dell'Acquabianca
Senerchia (AV)
The water falls milk-white down a rock wall, in a valley the earthquake left almost unreachable — and which for that reason stayed wild.
- In the water & diving
Cascata del Tuorno
Calabritto (AV)
A waterfall almost nobody knows, in a valley where 1980 erased nearly everything except the water.
- In the water & diving
Cascate dell'Acquaserta
Quadrelle (AV)
On the northern flank of the Partenio, a stream drops in leaps down a moss-covered gorge: ten minutes from the road and you are in another world.
- In the water & diving
Sorgenti dell'Ofanto
Torella dei Lombardi (AV)
From a crack in the rock is born the river Horace sang of as violent: two hundred kilometres later it will be the Adriatic. Here it is still a thread of water you could step over.
- In the water & diving
Valle del Torano: sorgenti e cascata del Malopasso
Castello del Matese (CE)
More than two cubic metres of water a second pour out of the belly of the Matese: one of the most powerful springs in the South. As you climb the gorge the walls close in, and you walk right inside the stream up to the waterfall.
- In the water & diving
Cascate e gole del Lete
Prata Sannita (CE)
The river of oblivion carves a gorge of green pools and small waterfalls, among old mills, washhouses and the gutted walls of a paper mill. You follow it alongside the water, with the stone borgo (old village) hanging above your head.
- In the water & diving
Parco Sorgenti Ferrarelle
Riardo (CE)
One hundred and forty-five hectares above seven springs: here the water is born sparkling from the heart of the volcano, among oaks, the ruins of old taverns and an eighteenth-century masseria (fortified farm).
In the water & divingPonte Real Ferdinando sul Garigliano
Sessa Aurunca (CE)
On 10 May 1832 the king climbed to the middle of the span and ordered two squadrons of lancers to trot across it, followed by sixteen artillery trains: Italy's first iron-chain suspension bridge had to prove it was not afraid. It is still there, with its cast-iron sphinxes.
- In the water & diving
Ponte di Annibale e terme di Triflisco
Bellona (CE)
Here the Volturno narrows between the rocks, and memory says that Hannibal threw a bridge across to move his army over, the same army that loosed a herd of oxen with blazing horns against the Romans. Of the bridge only a few teeth of stone remain in the green water.
- In the water & diving
Area archeologica di Cellarulo
Benevento (BN)
Where the Sabato surrenders itself to the Calore stood the city's pre-Roman river port: reed beds, willows and the stumps of a bridge, in a strip of countryside outside of time.
In the water & divingPonte delle Serretelle
Benevento (BN)
A humpback bridge that no longer leads anywhere: the torrent changed course and left it there, one arch collapsed and the roots eating it away. In 1113 men fought here against the Normans.
- In the water & diving
Mulino di Zi' Fiore e Ponte del Mulino
Cusano Mutri (BN)
A mill carved into the rock face, still since the Fifties, reached by an arched bridge once crossed by the Oscan mule track. The water keeps turning a wheel that is no longer there.
- In the water & diving
Diga di Campolattaro
Campolattaro (BN)
An earth colossus almost seventy metres high, finished and then left for decades as a work with no purpose: the great unfinished project of the Sannio, the ambition of the Eighties turned to stone.
In the water & divingPonte Maria Cristina
Solopaca (BN)
In 1835 it was Italy's second suspension bridge, its iron chains calculated down to thermal expansion. In 1943 the retreating Germans blew it up with people on it: what remains are the neo-Egyptian pylons and the marble lions guarding a bridge that no longer exists.
- In the water & diving
Confluenza Calore-Volturno e Parco fluviale
Amorosi (BN)
Where the Calore surrenders itself to the Volturno, poplars and reed beds hide a park left almost wild: it is the same ford that for three thousand years decided who controlled the Sannio.
- In the water & diving
Sorgenti del Fizzo (Acquedotto Carolino)
Bucciano (BN)
From here the water sets off on thirty-eight kilometres to make the fountains of the Reggia di Caserta play: point zero of Vanvitelli's hydraulic masterpiece, a UNESCO site that almost nobody comes to see.
- In the water & diving
Ponte Carlo III dell'Acquedotto Carolino
Moiano (BN)
Four arches of tufo (volcanic tuff) over the Isclero, bearing the inscription CAROLUS ET AMALIA MDCCLIII: the first public proof that Vanvitelli's hydraulic dream would actually work.
- In the water & diving
Lavatoio Reullo
Sant'Agata de' Goti (BN)
Three stone basins under a fourteenth-century pointed arch, where the Isclero meets the Riello: here women washed their laundry until only yesterday, and the underground water has never stopped arriving.
- In the water & diving
Cascate e mulini del Vallone Martorano
Sant'Agata de' Goti (BN)
Beneath the tufo (volcanic tuff) spur on which the borgo (old village) seems to float, the water plunges in a series of leaps among the ruins of mills and an old ironworks: the water trail that no visitor to Sant'Agata ever climbs down to find.