Ischia
Ischia is an island of Italy belonging to the archipelago of the Flegree Islands, in Campania.
Located at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples and not far from the islands of Procida and Vivara, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, it is the largest of the Flegree. With its 62,733 inhabitants [1] it is the third most populous Italian island, after Sicily and Sardinia. In antiquity it was known as Pithekoussai or Pithecusae (in Greek Πιθηκούσσαι).
It is a strong tourist attraction for the Gulf of Naples and for the city itself.
From the approximate shape of a trapezoid, the island is about 18 nautical miles from Naples, is 10 km wide from east to west and 7 from north to south, has a coastline of 34 km and a surface of about 46 km². The highest relief is represented by Mount Epomeo, 788 meters high and located in the center of the island. The latter is a submarine volcano sunk in the last 100,000 years. In fact, the entire island is none other than the peak of Mount Epomeo, the last point of the volcano still on the surface.
The volcanic activity in Ischia has generally been characterized by not very large eruptions and at a great distance of time. After eruptions in Greek and Roman times, the last occurred in 1301 in the eastern sector of the island with a short flow (Arso) reached up to the sea.
Several parts of its coastline are included in the marine protected area Kingdom of Neptune.
The island of Ischia was inhabited since the Neolithic, as evidenced by the various findings found for example on the heights of Punta Imperatore, in the hamlet of Panza, in the south-west of the island.
The fortuitous discovery of dry stone walls, which took place in 1989 following a landslide, in the locality of Chiarito, which took place in the hamlet of Panza, gave the start between 1993 and 1995 to excavation work that allowed the discovery of a Greek farm held by wealthy farmers, as evidenced by the good workmanship of the vases that were found and allowed to anticipate the landing of the first Greek settlers of about twenty years compared to the original hypothesis, ie around 790, 780 BC Initially, it was believed that the landing took place right in Monte Vico, today in the municipality of Lacco Ameno, where the Euboean settlers arrived from Eretria and Chalkis in the eighth century BC, would establish an emporium for trade with the Etruscans of the land.
Thanks to the excavations of 1993, it was understood today that in reality, the first settlers settled in S-O on the island, on the heights of Chiarito peak, in Panza, a hamlet of the municipality of Forio. The bay of Sorgeto, located at the foot of Punta Chiarito, offers an ideal shelter for ships, especially from sirocco winds, an important requirement for the Greeks, when choosing a landing place. This requirement, in fact, is not present in the area of Mount Vico and constituted for the scholars a not easily explainable anomaly.
About twenty years after the original landing, colonized most of the island, the colony of Pithecusa is founded, whose main center will, however, be on the heights of Mount Vico, in the northern part of the island, facing the continent, in so as to have a faster exchange with the mainland. [4] With its port the colony made its fortune thanks to the iron trade with the rest of Italy; in the period of maximum splendor it had about 10.000 inhabitants.
Islet of Sant'Angelo
In 1953, in the necropolis of San Montano in Lacco Ameno, the German archaeologist Giorgio Buchner found the cup of Nestor, dating back to 725 BC. about. It is the oldest example of a poem written in Greek.