A guide to summer on Ischia, Italy’s ‘green island’

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My wife and I got married last month and celebrated on Ischia – but even before that, I knew I was tied to the island for life. We first visited for a friend’s wedding in 2024 and found somewhere that just made sense: green, volcanic, local and slow. It’s a container for so much and feels perfectly aloof from the world.

You arrive via the ferry from Naples, where there’s always something going on: fireworks in the street, music, dancing, Vesuvius boiling above you. The ferry peels you away from the madness and you chug for an hour, past the island of Procida and its ancient walled town, towards Ischia. 

When you’re circling into the port, Castello Aragonese is easy to spot – a soaring 15th-century structure tethered to the island by a land bridge. Il Monastero, the hotel within the castle, is the best stay on Ischia. It’s a simple place, formerly a convent of the Poor Clares, and has a humility which reflects that. Nicola and Cristina Materra’s grandfather acquired the castle around 1912 and turned an overgrown ruin into an exquisite place to stay. Underneath the hotel is a gallery, The Studio, showing works by Italian artists including Gabriele Materra, Nicola and Cristina’s father. The rooms are sparse but the big portrait windows sweep in the sea; you wake up and the blue is all around you. Breakfast is served on a terrace: figs, strawberries, homemade bread and tomatoes. The volcanic earth here gives the produce an unbelievable intensity of flavour.

At the Excelsior’s Bar Americano, Enzo has been making Manhattans for 30 years

I love to run on Ischia. Head out across the land bridge and veer left into the hills above Ischia Ponte. It’s steep and the houses are stacked on top of each other, each vying for the view. Everyone has a kitchen garden – tomatoes, basil, wild rocket and rosemary bushes the size of trees. Rising up the hillside, you glimpse the arched, two-tiered Pilastri aqueduct; then you finally emerge at the top of the ridge and can see Procida and Naples in the distance. Afterwards I jump straight into the sea, socks and all. 

If you want more swimming, wander down the bridge and climb over the rocks. Locals sunbathe on the flat boulders and meander around the bay on floaties. Lying on your back you can look up to the summit of the volcano – Monte Epomeo – at the island’s centre. Get close enough and you can feel the effervescence rising from the island’s volcanic bed. In fact, on the far side of Ischia there are thermal baths – my favourite is Negombo, near the Mortella botanical gardens (also an excellent visit). They’re a little bit commercial but still brilliant fun. 

For lunch, pick up a water taxi to one of the casual places along the beach with Angelo, who usually waits by Il Monastero looking like he’s dropped out of a Fellini picture: cigarette, sunglasses, pure nonchalance. But for a treat, take a car into the hills to Braccionere. The waiters are all men in their 60s or 70s and no one speaks English. It feels like a Tyrolean lodge: cool, dry, piney, held up by wooden beams, windows flung open to the trees. (You realise how many scents Ischia has. Down by the sea it’s jasmine, citrus and salt; up in the hills it’s pines, fig trees and volcanic earth.) There’s a tradition of eating rabbit here on a Sunday, from a recipe introduced by the Syracusans. At Braccionere you can order coniglio all’Ischitana (Ischia rabbit) to share; it’s phenomenally light and fresh, nothing like a French civet.

Late afternoon means gelato – the best is Gelateria Ice da Luciano near Ischia Ponte – and at sunset, a Campari on the convent terrace. Another sure-fire choice is Bar Americano at the Excelsior Belvedere, where Enzo has been making Manhattans for 30 years. It has all the glamour of 1960s travel, with carved wood, waiters in white jackets and framed pictures by Nicola’s father. Head on to dinner at Cocò’s, which is relaxed and local. Just order a simple dish – puntarella and artichoke, spaghetti pomodoro, vongole – and a litre of chilled biancolella, the island’s best grape, which is just €10. Generally, the food in Ischia offers a lighter, more restrained cuisine than you’ll find in Naples. Anything more would feel excessive.

Ischia is a hidden little trove of abundance. It’s not showy but is rich in other ways: full of history – the famous Nestor’s cup, an eighth-century BC artefact, was discovered in a tomb here in the 1950s – and the sun and volcanic soil means everything just grows and grows. The island feeds you in every way.