PONZA AND VENTOTENE ISLANDS

PONZA
Do it yourself Walking tour

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Ponza's jagged coastline is a mosaic of colored volcanic rock Though there are few physical reminders of its history, Ponza was an ancient settlement, possibly inhabited by the Phoenicians. It later became a Roman colony; in fact Tiberious exiled Nero on the island. The island of Ponza is the greatest of the Pontine Islands (or Ponziane Islands). Set on one of the most beautiful coastlines on the Mediterranean, between the Gulf of Gaeta and Circeo Point, Ponza is the largest of a string of volcanic islands, the others being Ventotene and Santo Stefano to the east and Gavi, Zanone and Palmarola to the west. Is an island much small, long ca. 8 km. and one of the points more tightened single measure ca. 300 mt., has ca. 3500 inhabitants Ponza has a particularly healthy climate thanks to the iodine-rich breeze rising from the crystal clear sea and blending with the sun's rays. The shores are mainly rocky and made up of tufa cliffs, with caves, creeks and steep, offshore crags. This rocky landscape also has bays and little beaches, the most famous and most extensive being Chiaia di Luna. its waters are some of the clearest and most pleasurable for swimming. Because car traffic is limited, Ponza is a particularly peaceful spot. The town of Ponza is laid out like an amphitheatre around the port and is the island's main tourist and seaside resort. Beyond to the beautiful deeps, there is to see the murenaio (moraine's pond), the cove of the snake (roman aqueduct), the island of Palmarola, and not to forget a visit to the Zannone island, natural park of the Circeo where, beyond to see a rare species of mouflons, a clean air can also be breathed that... many perhaps do not remember more! Geographically, Ponza belongs to the Lazio and in effects it is also province of Latina but the origin and therefore the nature of the Ponzesis is Neapolitan certainly, having been Ponza colonized by the Neapolitans (Torre del Greco, Torre Annunziata, Ischia, and so on) already from 1700 (to work of the Borbonis). The tallest top of Ponza is the Guardia-Mountain that measures around 280 mt.

VENTOTENE

The Romans who founded their first colony on the Pontine Archipelago around the year 300 BC and built the magnificent harbour at Pertuso Point, which is still one of the great tourist attractions, decided its fate as a prison island. The island was transformed into a gilded cage for the female prisoners of the Julius-Claudia dynasty when the Emperor Augustus proclaimed the Lex Julia, under which in the year 2 AD he exiled his wanton daughter Julia, whose second husband, Tiberius, left her because of her immoral behavior. An unwilling "tourist", Julia lived in a luxurious villa, 300 meters long and 100 wide, on the isolated headland at Eolo Point, cut off from the harbor and the hamlet of Ventotene by a small valley which no local was allowed to cross on pain of death. Julia stayed on the island until she died in 14 AD, but in spite of this enforced isolation, her exile cannot have been too great a hardship because she had twenty slaves at her disposal and apparently continued her amoral way of life if the rumor that she had a child there is anything to go by. A succession of high-ranking women rightly or wrongly accused of immorality followed Julia to Ventotene, including Vipsania Agrippina, Tiberius' step-daughter and Germanicus' wife, who was exiled there in 29 AD and left to die of starvation; followed in 62 AD by Ottavia, Nero's sterile twenty year old wife, who was plunged into a hot bath after the veins in her legs had been cut open. Towards the end of the century, Flavia Domitilla was accused of Judaism by Domitian and sent to the island where she suffered the martyrdom for which she was later venerated as a saint. These aristocratic "guests" were succeeded by the early Christians, convicts and, over the years, Libyans, Albanians, Slavs, Greeks, the Carbonari, members of an early 19th century secret political sect, and the revolutionary followers of Mazzini. In 1939, during the Fascist era, the "colony of political confinement", which had been created in 1928 on the nearby island of Ponza, was transferred to Ventotene because it was smaller and easier to guard. From this conclave of anti-Fascists, sprang the federalist group of dissenters, which included Ernesto Rossi, Eugenio Colorni and Altiero Spinelli (former member of the European Parliament), who prepared the first European Manifesto of Ventotene, which was secretly carried from the island and circulated in Nazi-occupied Rome. When Fascism was defeated on July 25th, 1943, 833 people were confined on Ventotene (former President of the Republic, Sandro Pertini, too, according to the guidebooks). The most eminent among them set up the "Government of Ventotene" which, in conjunction with the Badoglio government and not without difficulty, organized the transfer of the internees to the mainland.

Utopia Island
The nickname of Utopia Island is not commonly known or often remembered since it was the result of a whim cherished by Ferdinand IV of Naples to create flourishing colonies on the Pontine Islands by repopulating them and encouraging economic growth and public works. Ferdinand longed to experiment Jean-Jacques Rousseau's theory that it is the environment that affects man negatively and that if he is placed in unspoiled surroundings he will redeem himself and become an unspoiled and therefore worthy being. So, on October 17th 1768, 200 jail-birds and thieves and as many prostitutes picked up from the streets of Naples set sail for Ventotene, at that time an island with only a cluster of inhabitants and as such the ideal setting for an environmental experiment. Needless to say the scheme failed because, although the initial novelty encouraged one and all to labour with zest, it wasn't long before vices and idleness resurfaced, a brothel was set up, and crime, riots and intrigues became so rife that the Bishop of Gaeta intervened and in 1771 the King ordered the evacuation of his guinea-pigs and then promptly buried both theory and experiment with a gusty sigh of relief.