Yvan Gastaut

 

Every Sunday morning the Italian public television station RAI Uno, broadcasts the emission Magica italia, turismo e turisti, created in 2009. In thirty minutes it shows the cultural and artistic heritage of Italy rewarding places and spaces that are a contribute innovatevely in the tourism offer. Supported by the Ministry of Tourism, which gives the show a somewhat promotional caracter, the show’s objective is to incite viewers to visit the sites.

For this emission of May 30, 2010, presenters Frederico Quaranta and Nicola Federico suggest a getaway on the island of Ischia, located in the Bay of Naples in the archipelago of Phlegrean islands through a documentary entitled "Ischia, island of the Sun God."

Ischia covers an area of ​​47 km2, measuring ten kilometers from east to west and seven kilometers from north to south. With over sixty thousand inhabitants, the island, the third most populated in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia, is volcanic, formed by the lava of Mount Epomeo that rises to 800 meters. Ischia is not immune to earthquakes: that of July 28, 1883 caused the death of four thousand people.

The Greeks called the island “Pithécusses”, which may come from the Greek word "pithekos" ("monkey "), referring to a legend saying that its first inhabitants, the Cercopes, were turned into monkeys by Zeus because of their perjury. Pliny the Elder (23-79) brings another version, by deriving the name "pythoi" ("amphora") heavily manufactured in Ischia: archaeological works show that the production of ceramics there was indeed flourishing at the end of the first phase of Greek colonization.

During an excavation in 1954, a vase called "Nestor’s cup" was discovered and preserved on the island with an inscription that means when translated: “Nestor’s cup I am, good to drink from.
Whoever drinks this cup empty, straightaway
the desire of beautiful-crowned Aphrodite will seize”.  As shown in the report, this reference allows to highlight the excellent wines produced in Ischia where they also grow olives as well as fruit trees, including orange trees. The show also emphasizes on the gastronomic aspects by presenting a culinary specialty: the rabbit.

As suggested by the journalist Isabella Marino, tourists are attracted to Ischia by the quality of beaches and waters, the majesty of rugged landscapes, decorated with rocks and pine trees, but also by weather stations and especially by its famous sources of very hot waters, on which the show emphasizes by giving voice to thermal tourism professionals.

Furthermore, the Bay where emerges a mushroom shaped rock nicknamed "fungo", the report shows attractive images of Ischia’s port, the main agglomeration of the island that impresses with its round shape on the inside of an ancient volcanic crater, while Forio, a town located on the opposite, on the west coast, gradually opens up to tourism. Standing on the promontory, the camera invites you to discover the beautiful church of Santa Maria del Soccorso. Fishermen and sailors have made this nineteenth century building their sanctuary. After a stormy trip, they came to give thanks to the Madonna: some offered ship models as ex-votos.

The document focuses particularly on the worldly past of Ischia especially during the fifties and sixties when it was frequented by cinema celebrities and international "jet set". Famous directors came to shoot scenes for films as says the historian Giovanni Di Meglio: among the most famous was Cleopatra by Joseph Mankiewicz (1963), that was partly filmed on the island in 1962. The director particularly chose as a frame, the Aragonese Castle, the most remarkable monument of the island, rebuilt from an ancient Greek then Roman fortress by Alfonso V of Aragon in 1441. This spectacular monument perched on a rock of volcanic origin, had the splendor when Ischia was independent from the Kingdom of Naples, but under the Aragonese Sicilian domination between the mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. The presence of the couple formed by Richard Burton and Liz Taylor left brought everybody’s attention: many Ischitans who participated in the movie as extras still remember it like Riccardo d'Ambra in the report. A few years earlier, in 1957, the director Mario Camerini filmed “Holidays in Ischia” with Vittorio De Sica while the latter performed on the spot in 1962 the movie “Hunting the fox” with Peter Sellers. As for Luchino Visconti who met one of his love adventures at Ischia, the young Austrian Helmut Berger, he was buried on the island that he loved to visit regularly.