Ischia and the visions of July
July to Ischia inaugurates the summer season thanks to the many initiatives and events on the green island. On the occasion of the Ischia Global Fest, the island fills with the scent of internationalization thanks to the many actors and VIPs who live there. Days more long and sunny of a summer heat provide an experience unique in the wonderful thermal parks always preferred by tourists and islanders. In this July issue we want to offer the tourist a broad view of Ischia, charming summer destination for holidays and pleasure-loving location.
Autumn or the long summer
Who said that Autumn brings out melancholy -as says a famous Neapolitan song of the 1950s - because the leaves fall from the trees, the days are shorter, the Sea water is colder, the sun always warmer?
The island of the grape - Visiting wineries 2014
Perhaps what fascinates most of the island of Ischia is its story. Not the story of great or rich men “whose names are carved on the buildings”, as Michael Ondaatje, that also is interesting here, but the “common story” of whom the French call “le petit peuple” that is “lower classes”.
Mr. Benedetto Migliaccio, heir to an ancient family of Ischia, passionate historian and bibliographer, has recovered after 100 years of neglect his vineyard Jesca which is located in the municipality of Serrara-Fontana and extends for about 14 hectares. He has called the “vineyard of the thousand years” because it has a thousand years of history, having found the first document in the archive where in 1034 a notary archive the donation of the estate "Jesca" of Mellusi to the Benedictine monastery “for the redemption of soul”.
“Here are layered thousand years of history - he says - and the memories of the ancient illiterate peasants are entrusted to the terracing without parracine, because here there is no green stone as in Forio, the caves dug into the tuff and the same way to dig the earth since the quality of the soil and how to cultivate it make a difference to the quality of the grapes and therefore the wine”.
After 100 years of abandonment the estate Jesca with the D’ Ambra Vini by Andrea D’ Ambra has produced a magnificent red wine which is the “vine of the thousand years”, and this year there will be on Sunday, September 14th for the third time the “auteur vintage” that will transform for a day, lawyers, journalists, architects in short, men and women of pen and of chair into farmers as a tribute to the memory of those that Mr. Migliaccio called “heroes” because they were able to dominate nature that here is impervious but with an indescribable view it does take the visitor spellbound the island of Sant’ Angelo and the island of Capri in his arms, stopping the breath.
“The harvest is a feast for the vineyards return to a handful of heroes, the fruit of a commitment that knows no pause in the arc of year”, says Mr. Migliaccio.
Great archaeologist Amedeo Maturi (1886-1963) was enchanted by the Ischian vintage walking “along the trails that descend from the chestnut of Barano, Serrara and Buonopane to the hot sands of the navy of the Maronti to the jeweled charm of the promontory of S. Angelo” and on this ground upset, landslide, bibulous, such as pumice, dry as a bait, browned by the sun and sea wind, made warm by boiling underground, heat secret that will run in as the blood in the arteries, thrives sovereign the vine”.
“Wine is the ‘water of Ischia”, writes Norman Douglas (1868-1952) in his extraordinary book “Summer Islands”, telling of Ischia and recommending to taste “the wine of each degree of latitude of the island, from golden stream of a thousand barrels of Forio to the pale lily "ichor", divine nectar exuding from the grapes of the dwarf mountain”.
This island of grape there is still with its vineyards, cellars and all its typical production and one can see from September 14 to 18 with the event “Visiting wineries” organized by the Pro Loco Panza that we present in this special issue.
Not only we pay homage to an ancient civilization but present economic segment, on which the people of Ischia have lived for centuries, became modern with terrific wineries and integrated with all other segments of the tourism of Ischia from the beach to the spa, from the cultural one to that in open air for young people.
This ancient island is always renewed and asks all visitors to be loved and preserved with care and respect because life is not enough to know it all.
Sweet September
This is the focus of the number which, like all others, is in Italian and English and is pulled in 10,000 copies.
The pelican is a sea bird that feeds on fish. It has massive body, the plumage is black and white and has a long yellow beak with a bag of skin. It lives along the coast rich in fish of temperate seas. It is so named the boat of Domenico Barricelli, 55, a fisherman from Sant’Angelo of Ischia which can have a crew of six sailors.
It is the “Pellicano” which each year brings in procession to the sea on September 30, the statue of St. Michael the Archangel, the protector of Sant’ Angelo which is called so because of the cult to Angelo revered as protector and warrior driver represented with drawn sword on the dragon.
The cult of St. Michael the Archangel in Sant’Angelo is dated back as early as the fifteenth century. Domenico Barracelli with his “Pellicano” leads the procession to the sea at least 25 years and this “Pellicano” is the fifth since before there were four others.
The feast of St. Michael the Archangel in the sea closes the long cycle of religious festivals with processions to the sea that begin on May 17 with Santa Restituta in Lacco Ameno and go on for the whole summer of Ischia.
Among the celebrations of local color that one of St. Michael the Archangel is perhaps the most impressive. On September 29, there is the procession of the saint through the streets of the village which is lit by a thousand of oil cans placed on the seven reefs and on September 30 the procession to the sea with hundreds of boats with in the head the "Pelican" with San Michele. The procession reaches the top of the Punta Maronti and Punta Chiarito almost to bless the whole southern side of the island of Ischia that greets the sister islands of Capri and Ventotene each placed 18 miles from “the mother island”.
Then there is the spectacle of the midnight fireworks with the simulated fire tower to commemorate the bombing of the British in 1809.
At the feast of St. Michael attended by thousands of islanders and tourists every year with the same enthusiasm.
September is the sweetest month of year for Ischia. The days are shorter and cooler but nature is much more quiet. It is the month of spa treatments and those sun therapy and long walks on the hills and on the summit of St. Nicholas as the roads of the island of Ischia call with its 788 meters. The month of the discovery of the "island of the earth" and its age-old traditional viticulture with “Visiting wineries”, the great event in its seventh edition, which takes place on September 14 to 18 at the initiative of the Pro Loco Panza and to which we will dedicate a special issue.
September is also the month to find out the ins and loads of history of Borgo di Celsa and Forio especially where during the years 1950s have stayed Truman Capote and WH Auden writing short stories and poems sitting at the "Caffè Internazionale".
Ischia has changed compared to that seen and narrated by Capote and Auden with the great mass tourism but that romantic air is still and in September with the fiery sunsets viewed from the "church of the fishermen that juts out into the sea as the prow of a ship”, as Capote called the Church of Soccorso, that air becomes purer almost requires compliance of History and Geography of the places where many people of Contemporary Culture have passed, and where the churches preserve the memories of a centuries-old ancient island.
The ancient religious festivals begin on September 8 with the feast of Our Lady of Montevergine in the small hamlet of Succhivo but also in the village of Schiappone in Barano and then 12 with the feast of Santa Maria al Monte in Forio and again from 12 to 15, the feast of San Leonardo in Panza in the town of Forio.
On September 24 is a public holiday in Fontana, the highest center of the island place 452 meters above sea level, to the Madonna of Mercy and also in the district of Majo Casamicciola with Our Lady of Sorrows or Our Lady of Sorrows.
But September is also the month of the cultural and artistic events that take place mostly in the City of Ischia and Forio, the "two capitals" of the island posed to the East and West.
In this issue we try to introduce the sweet September of Ischia but also the recipes of the month with our recommended restaurants, local products, the beauty centers, the sights to see and the wonderful spa gardens with our best wishes for a peaceful holiday with good and Ischia ... in your pocket.
G. M.
The sea in the sun
In distribution on the island of Ischia the August 2014 issue (5-year) of the Magazine "Ischianews & events"
Many, many years ago came out on "Corriere della Sera" an article- short stories-of the third page of Nicholas Tucci (1908-1999). It was dedicated to the relationship between the islander and the island.
“The fidelity of islander to the island - wrote Tucciis not parochialism because it extends the trees, the rocks and the way in which they appear on the “enemy element” and that is the sea”. The observation is appropriate: that "no pride" of the attachment of the islander to the island; affection extended to the nature of the island, the trees and the rocks, and even in the way that overlook the sea called the “enemy element” express the nature of the island.
The islanders live on the sea and they cannot live far from the sea. From the sea, the islanders derive their livelihood but remember the sea is especially stormy, furious, threatening and even murderess. Maybe that’s why Tucci calls him “the enemy”..
In the sacristy of the church-museum-shrine of the patron saint of the island of Ischia, Restituta, in Lacco Ameno there are hundreds of votive thanks to the grace of sailors, fishermen, boat owners, who testify their gratitude and their faith to the Saint for having saved their lives in danger because of a storm at sea. It is also the testimony of at least two or three centuries of history.
The islanders - all the islanders of the world - have this unbreakable bond with the sea.
But in August, the sea becomes a “friend” and stretches to the sun and welcomes everyone of all ages to live the “good season”.
“The sea is the great metaphor of life and the man is “thalassic” that is he was born in the sea but is on loan to the earth and so always feels nostalgia for his place of origin”, said Professor. Edoardo Malagoli, a Lombard who settled in Ischia in the years 1950s, teaching Italian and history in High School, so affected "by enchantment of the sea" so much that he personally built his boats.
August is the month of ‘all go to the beach’ and Ischia offers all its sandy, rocky, spa charm with gardens, docks, tourists from all over the world in addition to its huge historical heritage of the oldest Greek colony of the West. From this year you can also admire the underwater city of Aenaria in the stretch of water at the rocks of St. Anne just overlooking the Aragonese Castle (the reportage is on page.....) with the signs of the Roman colonization.
The sea in August lives and it is also the opportunity for day trips by boat to the other islands of the Gulf of Naples and Gaeta because Ischia is the island-mother of “Neapolitan archipelago” that goes from Capri to Ponza. Just Ponza - the farthest island - was colonized by the islanders in the eighteenth century and in this issue we “romanticize” the journey of the first settler of 1734.
In this issue there are also recipes of the month with our recommended restaurants, typical products, beauty centers, the sights to see and the wonderful spa gardens and of course the full calendar of events is of “local color” as the feast of the Our Lady of the Assumption in Lacco Ameno and the parade of St. Alexander in costumes’ era, with both musical and cultural events.
This and more in the edition of August with our best wishes for a good and peaceful holiday with... Ischia in your pocket!
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