Aragonese Castle

The Aragonese Castle seems to grow out of the sea: a great volcanic rock, 113 metres high, rising off the east coast of Ischia and crowned with walls, bastions, domes and the ruins of churches. It stands on a tidal islet in the Gulf of Naples, joined to the town of Ischia Ponte by a masonry causeway about 220 metres long, and covers roughly 56,000 square metres. From the top, the view sweeps over the island, the Bay of Naples and the mainland coast.

The rock has been fortified for nearly two and a half thousand years. In 474 BC Hiero I of Syracuse built the first stronghold here, with two towers to watch over his fleet, and the Romans took it in 326 BC. The castle owes its present name and much of its shape to Alfonso V of Aragon, who in 1441 replaced the wooden bridge with a stone one and strengthened the defences against pirate raids. The stronghold then became a small walled town. Around 1700 some 2,000 families lived on the islet, which held a convent of Poor Clares, an abbey of Basilian monks, the bishop's residence, a seminary, a garrison and thirteen churches. The poet Vittoria Colonna married Ferrante d'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, in 1509 and lived at the castle for long periods, gathering writers and artists around her.

Many of the surviving buildings tell this story in layers. The Cathedral of the Assumption, raised in 1306, keeps a crypt from the eleventh and twelfth centuries with frescoes painted between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries; the cathedral itself was wrecked in 1809, when British ships bombarded the castle during the French occupation of Naples. The Church of the Immacolata, begun in 1737, has a Greek-cross plan under a dome. The convent of the Poor Clares, founded in 1575, preserves its underground cemetery with stone seats where the bodies of dead nuns were left to dry. Under the Bourbons the castle served as a prison, holding conspirators of the Risorgimento until it closed in 1890. In 1912 the castle was sold at auction to private owners.

Getting there

The castle is at Ischia Ponte, on the east coast of Ischia, about 1.4 km from Ischia Porto, where ferries and hydrofoils from Naples and Pozzuoli arrive. The nearest airport is Naples International Airport (NAP), about 32 km away in a straight line, from which the island is reached by sea from the port of Naples.