In Ponza moored the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Etruscans. We are enamored of the largest island of the Pontine archipelago pirates as Khair-ad-Din Barbarossa nicknamed, the hero of the Risorgimento Carlo Pisacane, Turkish sultans, English, Spanish. Before that Mussolini was translated for about ten days later on July 25, ’43, Sandro Pertini, Pietro Nenni, Giorgio Amendola and Umberto Terracini, who had been sent by their Duce, there were also confined Circe and then Giulia , daughter of Emperor Augustus. The boat of Jacques Cousteau, the legendary explorer of the deep, was so often anchored in the turquoise sea that surrounds Ponza, for him to sometimes think of being in the Indian Ocean rather than a handful of nautical miles from the port of Civitavecchia. This, indeed, is a sweet and charming sea. The boat is left dangling from the clear emerald green waters up to the spectacular Natural Arch nicknamed O ‘Spaccapolpi and then to Maria Rosa Cliffs, which according to local legend, was the scene of the pontine Shakespearean drama: two lovers, invisible to their families, they decided to throw himself from the cliff rather to give up their love.
Impossible, however, do without the kitchen pontine, especially after getting wet at Gable source in Cala, Cala Feola, the Beach Ferns, or after having walked through the alleys where the entrances of houses “crib” in pastel colors around Tagliamonte Palace, the Tower of the Bourbons of Moorish architecture and along the Corso Pisacane vanvitelliano. The local dishes, in fact, are exquisite and tasty, whether you eat at sea during a fishing trip goiter with chefs, both in restaurants, from ‘”Acqua Pazza” by the prophetic name of the chef Gino Fish (one Michelin star), the free-range ‘Orestorante’ or ‘A casa di Assunta “by the name of its owner, and the first woman to Botero actress of local theater company. Whether it’s for seafood, or swordfish, amberjack, red snapper and especially the shrimp that are fished in waters 500 meters deep and is eaten raw or roasted or wine ‘buttoned up’ or stuffed with vegetables and boiled eggs, both that the ingredients come from the earth. What delicacy, in fact, are the wild grass pea, lentil little of Ponza, and to ‘Cucuzzella a zucchini or a meter and a half long, to taste stewed. Even the beans with the woodcock are a recipe of these islands that are almost a Paletted Impressionist blue and sea green, yellow broom, lilac of snapdragons, cyclamen of bougainvillea and white, pink and brown of the cliffs.
Today, 20 June, “falls” the feast of the patron saint San Silverio, the only son of a pontiff Pope, exiled on the island up to die of hunger and hardship after one of the many plots that were hatched in papal Rome of the ‘500. There will be a procession and will be shot in the sky fireworks. Then we will dive for a night swim on the beach of Chiaia di Luna from the red sand beaches. The city administration has promised a few months to project on the cliff that surrounds this poetic sand, white and majestic as the cliffs of Dover, 150 meters high and almost a mile long, a white cloth on which the images will be projected as a romantic cinemascope. Just be open to the public instead of the Cistern Dragonara Cave and the Necropolis of Old Bath, vestiges of great charm as the Caves of Pilate, a web of caves dug at sea level, connected by tunnels, and the ancient port built Bourbon architects of the school of Vanvitelli.
Yet it is also nice boat landing in that little paradise of nature which is the nearby islet of Zannone overlooking a rock called just “the monaco” because it seems to portray just a friar praying with folded hands. It is now a nature reserve where peregrine falcons, gulls and wild mouflon circling, chasing, and even flirt blessed. A Palmarola, however, the shallow waters almost Caribbean, slightly degrading give, even inexperienced divers, the enjoyment of seagrass and admire not only fans, but even five Roman ships among which that sank near the beach of Lucia Rosa. On this island lived until a few months the intellectual Ernesto Prudente, “self-proclaimed” President of the Republic of Palmarola, able to love to distraction, who dropped anchor in his heaven, caves dug into the rock as the Sassi of Matera, the oasis of palms, rare plants to encounter in the Mediterranean, and the woods of holm oaks. And it is also inevitable to make a sortie in sister Ventotene, a strip of land ‘sub-tropical’, which facilitated with its pleasant climate, with a very broad, vaticinante advance the story, the writing on the part of anti-fascists confined therein Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni of the “Manifesto” that demanded that union of European countries that would be accomplished several decades later.