Handpicked experience · Naples
Naples, Italy
An island shoved eight hundred metres up out of the seabed, a shoreline where the sea runs hot, and a village preserved by a prison.
A full day taking in both Ischia and Procida from Sorrento
Two island stops for swimming and snorkelling, with your own equipment
Live commentary from an English-speaking skipper
Drinks with and without alcohol, plus dry snacks aboard
Collection and return from the designated meeting points
Ten hours by boat from Sorrento to the two islands at the far side of the bay that most visitors never reach. Ischia is large, green and volcanic; Procida is four square kilometres of painted houses. There are swimming stops at both, a skipper who talks you through what you are passing, and drinks and snacks aboard.
You are collected from the meeting point and taken to the boat, then cross the bay with commentary in English as the coast opens out behind you. The day includes two stops for swimming and snorkelling — bring your own mask, as equipment is not supplied — along with time ashore. Drinks, alcoholic and otherwise, and dry snacks are provided on board. You return to Sorrento in the evening.
The mountain at the centre of Ischia is not a volcanic cone. It is a block of the seabed that magma below has been shoving upward for tens of thousands of years, lifting old marine rock nearly eight hundred metres into the air. Fossil beach material sits near the summit. The island is still rising and falling by measurable amounts, and the whole of it is essentially a lid on a very large hot chamber.
That chamber is why Ischia has been a spa island since antiquity. Hot water surfaces all over it, and at one cove on the south coast it comes up through the shingle at the tideline, so that the shallows sit somewhere between warm and scalding depending on where you put your feet. Romans came here to take the waters; so did the entire nineteenth-century European aristocracy.
Around 770 BC, Greek settlers founded a town on Ischia — the earliest Greek colony in the western Mediterranean, older than any on the Italian mainland. A drinking cup found in a grave there carries three lines scratched into it, teasing that whoever drinks from it will be seized by desire. It is among the oldest surviving pieces of Greek writing, and it refers to a cup described in the Iliad, which makes it the earliest known reference to Homer anywhere.
The fortified high town of Procida was turned into a jail in 1830 and stayed one until 1988. An island with a working prison on top of it does not get built over, does not get an airport and does not fill with resorts. Everything visitors now come for — the fishing harbour, the unbroken skyline, the emptiness — survives because for a century and a half nobody wanted to develop the place.
Procida's harbour of Corricella is a curve of houses in ochre, rose, blue and green, stacked up the slope with their stairs, arches and vaulted loggias facing the water. The vaulted terrace is a local form, built to shelter nets and catch the breeze. The island's lemons are also its own: enormous, thick-skinned and sweet enough that the white pith is eaten in salad.
Ten hours on and around a boat means sun, salt and wind. Bring a mask if you intend to snorkel, plus a towel, sun protection and a layer for the crossing. Cancellation is free up to a day ahead.
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Transfer to the boat, the crossing from Sorrento with commentary, two swimming and snorkelling stops, time ashore on both islands, and the return in the evening.
No, bring your own mask and snorkel. Everything else for the water side of the day — the stops themselves, drinks and dry snacks — is on board.
Because it is a block of old seabed being pushed upward by magma beneath it. Marine rock has been lifted nearly eight hundred metres, and fossil beach material lies near the summit.
At a cove on Ischia's south coast, thermal water rises through the shingle at the tideline, so the shallows range from warm to scalding depending on where you stand.
A drinking cup found in a grave on Ischia carries a three-line joke scratched into it, referring to a cup described in the Iliad. It is the earliest known written reference to Homer anywhere.
Because its fortified high town was a prison from 1830 until 1988. No airport, no resorts and no development followed, which is precisely why the fishing harbour and skyline survive.
A local building form, vaulted to shelter fishing nets and catch the sea breeze, with the staircases built on the outside of the houses.