Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

The main town of Ischia is ISCHIA PORTO , where most of the ferries dock, an appealing stretch of hotels, ritzy boutiques and beach shops planted with lemon trees and Indian figs fronted by golden sands: Spiaggia San Pietro is to the right of the port, accessible by following Via Buonocore off Via Roma; and the inexplicably titled Spiaggia degli Inglesi , on the other side of the port, is reachable by way of the narrow path that leads over the headland from the end of Via Jasolino. Otherwise the main thing to do is to window-shop and stroll along the main Corso Vittoria Colonna, either branching off to a further beach, the Spiaggia dei Pescatori , or following it all the way down to the other part of Ischia’s main town, ISCHIA PONTE , a quieter and less commercialized centre. Here the focus is the Castello Aragonese (March to mid-Nov 9.30am till sunset; L12,000/¬6.20, includes the lift to the top), which crowns an offshore rock but is accessible from a short causeway; its stunningly distinctive pyramid was one of the backdrops in the film The Talented Mr Ripley . Vittoria Colonna, the Renaissance poet and close friend of Michelangelo, spent much of her life here, following the seizure of her family’s land by Alexander VI. The citadel itself where she lived is rather tumbledown now and closed to the public, but below is a complex of buildings, almost a separate village really, around which you can stroll. There’s the weird open shell of a cathedral destroyed by the British in 1806, a prison that once held political prisoners during the upheavals of the Unification, and the macabre remnants of a convent, in which a couple of dark rooms ringed with a set of commode-like seats served as a cemetery for the dead sisters - placed here to putrefy in front of the living members of the community.