Ischia
13 places
VolcanoesMonte Epomeo
Ischia
The roof of the island at almost eight hundred metres: from the green tufo summit, with its hermitage carved into the rock, the eye takes in all of Ischia and the bay as far as Capri.
◆ CastlesTorre di Guevara
Ischia
Raised at the end of the fifteenth century on the meadow of Cartaromana, the tower also known as di Michelangelo faces the Castello Aragonese and the Sant'Anna rocks, and now frames art exhibitions.
Sacred artCattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta (Ischia Ponte)
Ischia (NA)
When the cathedral on the Castello was destroyed by English cannon fire in 1809, the bishops moved down to the valley and built a new one at the foot of the bridge. Beneath the present church survives the medieval crypt with frescoes of the Giottesque school.
- Free beaches
Baia di Cartaromana
Ischia
A small bay looking out on the Castello Aragonese and the Sant'Anna rocks, where thermal springs warm the sea and the Torre di Guevara keeps watch from the meadow above the water.
- ◆ Museums
Museo del Mare (Palazzo dell'Orologio)
Ischia (NA)
Three floors of nets, ex voto, models and photographs of men who set out to sea and never returned. It is the museum the fishermen of Ischia Ponte built for themselves, in the clock tower palace that marked the rhythm of their departures.
- ◆ Museums
MUDIS — Museo Diocesano di Ischia
Ischia (NA)
Silverware, vestments and painted panels gathered from the island's churches after earthquakes and collapses. It is the storehouse of Ischia's sacred memory, and almost no tourist ever opens its doors.
- Views & panoramas
Scogli di Sant'Anna
Ischia (NA)
Three teeth of rock facing the Castello Aragonese. Every 26 July the sea here fills with lit-up boats and at the end the Castello burns amid the fireworks: it is the Festa di Sant'Anna, and for one night the island re-enacts its own blaze.
- Free beaches
Spiaggia dei Pescatori
Ischia (NA)
Boats hauled up on the sand between the sunshades, and the Castello Aragonese closing the horizon: it is still the working beach of the fishermen, who tolerate bathers between one net and the next.
- ◆ Free beaches
Spiaggia degli Inglesi
Ischia (NA)
A tongue of dark sand hemmed in between two headlands, reachable only on foot along a path that starts behind the harbour: almost no one gets there, and that is exactly the point.
- ◆ Volcanoes
Monte Rotaro (cratere e fumarole)
Ischia (NA)
A crater 350 metres across and 127 deep, today covered in holm oaks and myrtle. Puffs of vapour still rise from the ground, and among the fumarole grows a plant that hardly grows anywhere else in Europe.
- ◆ Volcanoes
Cratere del Fondo d'Oglio
Ischia (NA)
A perfectly circular hollow hidden in the wood: inside they still grow vines, at the bottom of a volcano. Whoever descends cannot tell where they are until they look up.
- ◆ Views & panoramas
Montagnone
Ischia (NA)
The volcanic dome that looks straight down onto the port of Ischia, a crater in the middle of the inhabited island. From the top you see the Vesuvio ahead and Procida to the side, and under your feet there is lava.
- ◆ Nature
Pineta di Fiaiano (colata dell'Arso)
Ischia (NA)
This pinewood grows over Ischia's last eruption: in 1302 the lava of the Arso flowed all the way to the sea and wiped out everything in its path. Beneath the roots the flow is still there, black and intact.