Warm, gentle, health-giving waters

By Daniele Morgera

The island has become the European capital for thermal spas. With the very best facilities.

"The Titan Typheus was imprisoned in the bowels of Mount Epomeo and his limbs were scattered all over the island. he endured this harsh punishment for centuries, then begged Venus Citarea to ask Jupiter to pardon him. Hot tears flowed from the eyes of the repentant rebel. Jupiter, moved to pity, forgave Typheus and turned his tears into thermal waters."

The credit for discovering the therapeutic qualities of <%=ischia%>'s thermal springs goes to imperial Rome. Since then literature, from Strabo and Pliny to the nineteenth-century poets, has celebrated this island dominating the Mediterranean from the Bay of Naples as the emblem of well-being, regeneration and creativity.
Today <%=ischia%> is the European thermal wellness capital, a record confirmed by the number of facilities - over 300 establishments - and the variety of the waters. An impressive range of spas meets a wide range of medical requirements as well as the need for relaxation and the quest for an ideal psycho-physical equilibrium.
Thermalia, the main international thermal tourism fair in which operators from more than 30 different countries take part, is held in <%=ischia%>. The hot springs are part of the island's heritage and cultural identity, a blessing deeply appreciated by the inhabitants.
From generation to generation the people of <%=ischia%> have passed on the virtues of the precious warm water springs. Their names are linked to ancient traditions, to the districts and to everyday life: Gurgitello, Cappone, Ervaniello, Nitrodi, Buceto, La Rita are part of the fabric of an island whose social and economic development has largely depended on the thermal treatment business. The thermal waters of <%=ischia%> - elixir of youth, panacea for the skin and antidote for sterility - flow through the ages and fashions like a path leading on towards the future.

Between 1952 and 1970 the Milanese publisher and patron Angelo Rizzoli turned <%=ischia%>'s spas into fashionable resorts that have since become a driving economic force resulting in the tourist revolution that has turned this community of farmers and fishermen into a Mecca of the holiday industry, a leader in the sector currently boasting 6,500,000 overnight stays per year.
Angelo Rizzoli also launched the movie legend of the "green island", the natural setting of unforgettable 1960s films and a fashionable, aristocratic tourist destination attracting heads of state, princes, movie stars, famous personalities in the worlds of culture and show business, not to mention industrial tycoons.
In 1864, history left its mark in the person of Giuseppe Garibaldi, who stayed in Casamicciola to heal the wounds received in Aspromonte. Throughout the 19th century, literature was represented by visitors such as Lamartine, Vigny, Goethe, Ibsen and Benedetto Croce, and in the 1930s diplomats and members of the royal family of Savoia chose to stay in Borgo Sant'Angelo and the luxurious hotel Miramare, in a setting of fumaroles and an old-fashioned love story between a boatman and a German lady.
Then between 1955 and 1970, the scene was dominated by movie stars. The undisputed shrine of <%=ischia%>'s belle époque was the Regina Isabella spa in Lacco Ameno where the likes of John Wayne, William Holden, Esther William, Liz Taylor, Burt Lancaster, Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Miriam Bru and Graziella Granata often put in an appearance, giving rise to a wealth of gossip and tales of real or alleged love stories reported in fanciful detail by the press and destined to leave a deep mark on the popular imagination. Artists and intellectuals also visited the island - those were the sparkling years of Guttuso and De Chirico and of Maria Senese's Bar Internazionale in Forio, a meeting place for celebrated figures including writers such as W.H. Auden.
In those years <%=ischia%> became the buen retiro of one of the greatest film directors in the history of Italian and international cinema. Luchino Visconti began to prepare his film Senso in Forio, at La Colombaia, the dream villa in which he worked for long periods with the screenwriter Suso Cecchi d'Amico and actors Massimo Girotti, Alida Valli, Helmut Berger and Alain Delon.
The launch of the spa industry in the second half of the 1950s was made possible thanks to a new, scientific and more rigorous approach ba-cked by Angelo Rizzoli. The foundation of the Lacco Ameno Terme Research Centre and the First International Hydrology Congress held in 1958 played a fundamental role in endowing the spa industry with a new medical and scientific reputation.

The alliance between <%=ischia%>'s spas and VIPs in search of well-being has never been broken from the light-hearted atmosphere of the Rizzoli years to the present day. Luxurious yachts follow in the wake of the legendary Sereno bringing famous personalities irresistibly attracted by the island's beneficial hot springs. Aficionados of <%=ischia%> included Giovanni Agnelli, a very special guest of the Regina Isabella spa.
On <%=ischia%> the spas are not just traditional hotels and establishments. They also reflect the modern concept of an innovative mix of environment, sea and healing waters. The thermal parks are architectural and botanical gems where exotic plants, fragrances and nature paths lead to dozens of thermal pools in which the temperature of the water and the concentration of minerals vary. Hydro-massage, Kneipp baths (hot-cold immersions with sudden drops in temperature from 40° to 15°C) waterfalls, steam baths in grottoes and mazes in which one walks on pebbles to stimulate the circulation, are flanked by saunas, physiotherapy, beauty treatments, Turkish baths, showers and - why not - a dip in the sea or in an Olympic-size swimming pool, before a prudent dose of sunbathing on the sun beds provided.

The most famous and popular parks are Giardini di Poseidon (over 1,000,000 visitors), Negombo, owned by duke Fulceri Camerini in the bay of San Montano, Castiglione at Casamicciola and the gardens of the Apollon-Afrodite and the tropical gardens in Sant'Angelo.
These wellness centres are the answer to needs and dreams and provide, in the setting of a fascinating landscape, sensations that add a new dimension to the idea of thermal tourism.
The pleasure of coming into contact with the majesty and power of nature, above all. Also the romantic, timeless image of a boat riding at anchor in the sunset, of boys and girls swimming to a natural pool, surrounded by rocks in a setting that no engineer could hope to equal, at Bagnitiello (only a short distance away from the "cave of the Sybil") or Sorgeto (below the ruins of Punta Chiarito), remaining there until the sea yields to Neptune and to the enveloping warmth of the "miraculous water" gushing from the heart of <%=ischia%>.

Daniele Morgera, director of "La Colombaia" Foundation