Monte Rotaro (cratere e fumarole)
Ischia (NA)
Hidden gemVolcanoes
The story
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.
Access
FREE trail, loop ~2h from Fiaiano. Difficulty E (hiking)
More gems in Ischia
- 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.
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.
- 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.
More gems: Volcanoes
VolcanoesVesuvio — Gran Cono
Ercolano
The last stretch climbs on foot over the scree to the rim of the crater, where the warm breath of the earth mixes with the view of the whole Gulf of Naples.
VolcanoesCratere degli Astroni
Napoli (NA)
An extinct crater enclosed by wooded walls, with small lakes and silent trails: once a Bourbon hunting reserve, today an oasis where the woodpecker marks the time.
- Volcanoes
Vulcano di Roccamonfina
Roccamonfina (CE)
An extinct volcano clothed in chestnut groves, where the crater has become a plateau and every trail smells of dark earth and ancient woods.
VolcanoesMonte Nuovo
Pozzuoli (NA)
Born in a single night from a sixteenth-century eruption, the youngest mountain of the Campi Flegrei holds within its crater a green silence looking out over the gulf of Pozzuoli.
- 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.