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Volcanic in origin and perpetually warm in character, Ischia sits at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples, the largest of the three islands that punctuate that celebrated stretch of Tyrrhenian coastline. Its geology is the key to almost everything here. The island rose from the sea through volcanic activity, and the same subterranean heat that shaped its landscape continues to feed the thermal springs that have drawn visitors since antiquity. Romans came for the waters. So, in time, did Ibsen, Auden, and Walton, the British composer who made his home on the island for decades. Ischia has never needed to compete with Capri for glamour or with Procida for painterly simplicity; it has always occupied its own register, one defined by thermal pools, dense pine forests, terraced vineyards, and a coastline that shifts between dramatic cliffs and broad sandy bays.

The island divides into six comuni, each with a distinct personality. Ischia Porto and Ischia Ponte form the main hub, connected by the long Corso Vittoria Colonna and anchored at one end by the extraordinary Aragonese Castle, a fortified complex rising from a basalt islet and linked to the main island by a stone bridge. The castle's history spans more than two millennia, from its Greek foundations through Aragonese expansion under Alfonso I in the fifteenth century to its later use as a Bourbon prison. Reaching it by hydrofoil from Naples and then crossing to the rock itself is one of those arrivals that earns its own memory. The interior holds a cathedral ruin, a convent, a cemetery of the Clarisse nuns, and views across the gulf that extend on clear days to Vesuvius.