Villa Maria Luisa Ischia

The history of ischa

The long wave of history has marked out also this small portion of land in the middle of the sea. A brightly colored past made of battles won and lost, poets and courtesans, pirates and captains.

The island, for its geographical position has always been in a quiet sidly position, away from the major Italian events, but to know its develop in the course of th etime is equally interesting because often local history has its own lively and warlike pages, and because going to dig in the small drawers of a house helps to understand many things on its inhabitants; so also following the slow movement of the provincial life helps to have a clear picture of the history of the mentality of people. Ischia Middle Ages: With the arrival and establishment of the Longobards in Italy, the island became part, with the duchies of Gaeta, Naples, Amalfi and Sorrento, "of the extreme periphery of the Byzantine Empire".

In 588, Emperor Maurice gave its direct domain to Naples and, in 661, the island had its own governor with the title of Conte, under the direct supervision of the Duchy of Naples. Archaeological findings have revealed the presence of manufacturing plants in terracotta ("Byzantine ceramic"), of some metal workshop. Ischia landscape, however, was mainly rural, much like in Roman times, with a fragmented set of properties that took the name "fondo", followed by the name of the owner, "Vico", "Place", "Villa", "House" .., of which traces remain in modern topography. The owners, in this period, were the Church and the citizens of Naples.

In 598 Pope Gregory the Great acts to protect the rights of the Neapolitans. In the letter uses the term "de insulis" to indicate the island and the little island of the castle. This shows that for the island no longer exists a proper name (Pithekoussai, Aenaria), but the common name "insula" that, for spontaneous phonetic evolution, change to "Isola" and, finally, to "Ischia". In the IXth century, the island is under repeated and constant Saracen raids and, in 812, Pope Leo III sent a letter to Charlemagne to recommend the fate of the inhabitants of "Iscla Maior", that is, the large island. The islet of the castle, "Insula Minor" or "Gerone", was now fortified, "kastron ", and in 991 he was able to successfully resist the Saracens. The open settlements, that is not defended, were called "khorìa", a term from which almost certainly the name Forio comes from.

A document of 1036 provides lots information on the island, although not all were recovered. Count Marino and his wife Teodora, who commissioned the construction of a small temple in honor of Santa Restituta on the ruins of the ancient Christian basilica at the foot of Monte di Vico, they left all the property they owned in Lacco Ameno, Casamicciola, Fontana, Barano and in the Castle, at the convent and at the church of Santa Maria, run by Benedictine monks and situated on Mount Cementara (today Cimmiento) in the modern Lacco Ameno. The document also informs us of the existence of two other monasteries, one at Sant'Angelo and the other at Testaccio. In 1228 there is news of a terrible earthquake that destroyed "many houses ... with the fall and death of 700 people.

During the time in which Ischia belonged to Sicily (1287-1299) the sixth novel of  the fourth day of the Decameron is set, in which Giovanni Boccaccio recounts the abduction by Sicilian sailors, of Restituta Bulgaro, a very beautiful young girl, which is then freed by his young love, the grandson of Giovanni da Procida. The researchs of Salvatore Fodale have, however, attested the presence of numerous Ischia people in  Sicily, which is confirmed in the toponymy of Palermo, from the name of a court  said "degli Ischitani".  In this period names of villages remained untouched until today appear, while others are still obscure to us. The castle begins to assume its function of protection, the Borgo Mare center or Borgo Celsa center developed (the modern Ischia Ponte), where, among other things, there is the complex of the Augustinian convent of Santa Maria della Scala.

During the Aragonese-Angevin conflict the island, and the castle that in particular  is the scene of clashes. Peter III, promising aid, had invited ishia people to rebel against the Angevin, but only in 1297, the admiral Ruggero Loria was able to take possession of the castle. Attempts of the Angevins to recover the island were thwarted by Piero Salvacossa, but he surrended in 1299. Charles II of Anjou officially granted him the forgiveness, as to all the inhabitants of Ischia, which had rebelled with him and had acceded to the Aragonese". He granted also that the island would remain state property in perpetuity. Due to its strategic location, the castle was fortified even more and there sprang patrician houses. Charles askd for the construction of a port at the foot of the castle for the military and merchant fleet, with a dry dock and shipyard. Ischia people owned of a large fleet, whose presence is testified in the ports, among many others, of Venice, Bari, Palermo, Pantelleria, Rome, Tunis, Lebanon. Ischia ships transported also supplies and soldiers to Tunis to the King of France, Louis IX the Saint.

In January 1301 (or 1302) there was an eruption, named of Fiaiano, terrible and prolonged, "which destroyed all signs of human presence along the path of the lava flow". When everything subsided, inhabitants returned and, for the most part, settled in Borgo Mare, around the convent of the Augustinian friars, where the town was going increasingly thickening.

In 1320, King Robert d'Anjou, Prince scholar and patron of letters, who welcomed to his court Petrarch and Boccaccio, was guest of the Castle. He was accompanied by his wife Sancha and by his parents. He was received with great pomp by the governor Count Cesare Sterlic.

When the Angevin dynasty became extinct, followed the inevitable succession struggles, and Ischia was often the terrain of those struggles. It was already occupied for the succession of Giovanna I by Charles Durazzo; On Mount Rotaro the battle between the troops of Ladislao Durazzo and those of Louis II of Anjou took place. The Castle of Ischia summarizes all the stages of the ascent of Alfonso of Aragon to the throne of Naples. Disgraced queen Joan II, that also had adopted him, Alfonso fled to Ischia in 1423 and plundered it, because in his opinion it was too faithful to the queen. This could take the island with the help of a powerful Genovese fleet that sacked and devastated the entire island.

In 1438, Alfonso of Aragon, aided by Michele Cossa, lord of Procida, who had a great influence on the inhabitants of Ischia, captured, risking of drowning, the Castle, defended mainly by followers of Giannozzo Manocia, in favor of the Angevin. Alfonso exiled defenders and forced their wives and daughters to marry the 300 Catalans, his faithful, to whom he gave the fortress. When he became king gave the island to his favorite, Lucrezia d'Alagno of Torre del Greco, which entrusted the government to the brother of his husband, the spanish Giovanni Torella. Realizing about the strategic importance of the Castle, Alfonso asked to consolidate its structures, asked to build a tunnel to replace the old external staircase with a bridge linked it to the island, a bridge that could "be beaten" by a cannon. To fund this works applied a duty on salt, iron and pitch, imported or exported from Ischia. Granted many favors, "privileges" to Ischia people, including the ownership of half a mile of sea with beaches and headlands; exempting them from any type of tax and granted also legal privileges, ecclesiastical and honorific ones.

He was succeeded by Ferdinand I, named Ferrante, who was forced to fight to the death against the barons in revolt. Also the governor of the Castle, Giovanni Torella, didn't want to recognize his sovereignty and the king sent Aragonese troops who defeated him. Torella joined the pirates and the troops of Giovanni d'Angiò, took back the Castle, but died during the battle on the mountains of Campagnano. Ferdinand I abdicated, at the arrival of Charles VIII, in favor of his son Ferdinand II, who was forced to take refuge in Ischia, where he killed the warden, Giusto di Candida, guilty of intelligence with the enemy. He gave the island to Inigo d'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara and Vasto, who successfully defended it against Charles VIII. The king was able to return to Naples and, after his death, was succeeded by his uncle Frederick, who soon lost the kingdom thanks to Louis XII, King of France. Asked for help to his cousin, Ferdinand II the Catholic, but this, with the Treaty of Granada, had already agreed with the French king on the division of the Italian states. Frederick retired to Ischia where he lived for a while, then chose to surrender to the French and not to his cousin Ferdinand who had betrayed him. He left for France, giving the island to the Marquis del Vasto. When the conflict between France and Spain rekindled, King Frederick ordered to surrender the island to the king of France. Inigo d'Avalos and her sister Constance, mainly Spanish, preferred to defend against the French prisons, thus facilitating the great captain Gonzalvo de Cordoba the occupation of Naples.

In 1504, Ferdinand the Catholic, also became king of Naples. The Neapolitan  state was so absorbed by the Aragona, making for more than two centuries only Spanish viceroyalty. Ferdinand the Catholic granted the domain to life of the island of Ischia to Costanza d'Avalos. The "superb rock", the castle, became the residence of "great captains" and governors, of beautiful women, almost all princesses or with political role, but, above all, "a  humanist circle of the Renaissance around Vittoria Colonna". Vittoria married on the castle Francesco Ferrante d'Avalos, who was then the winner of Pavia, where he made prisoner Francis I, King of France. Due to the wounds of the battle, Ferrante died. It was still very young, his death left Vittoria Colonna in a state of deep grief. Almost all the historical events of the first half of the 500 had as a sounding board, the castle: the battle of Ravenna (1512), the battle of Pavia (1525), the sack of Rome (1527), the Battle of Capo d'Orso (1528). And when the pope, Clement VII, to free Rome from Lanzichenecchi, committed sacred ornaments, tiara and jewels, handed them to Alfonso del Vasto, who gave them in custody to his aunt Constanza d'Avalos on the Castle. This fervor of life went off and already in 1554 Ariadeno Barbarossa with his pirates had plundered, devastated and destroyed every corner of Ischia. Followed the incursion of Dragut (1546), for which the island, according to a description in 1574, was in a sorry state of great poverty. They were mostly sailors, fishermen and effort men, settled in villages, whose features and limitations are set out in the paper of Mario Cartaro annexed, in 1588, to the work of the Calabrian doctor, Giulio Iasolino, who described the Ischia baths and their medicinal effects. During the Viceroyalty Ischia was divided in three universities: the one of the City and of the island (the modern town of Ischia), the one of Forio with Panza, thw one of the Third which included Fontana, Barano, Casamicciola and Lacco, that is, all median area  ("el tercio"). Remained, however, under the rule of the d'Avalos, and only in 1734 or so, gained the independence, returning to the State.

During the War of Spanish Succession, Naples, so Ischia, came under the Austrian government and in 1734 under the Bourbon with Charles III. During the Neapolitan Republic, in March 1799, Ischia also raised "the tree of liberty"; but already at early April, the English fleet landed on the island to punish the insurgents, many of whom ended up in the prisons of St. Elmo, others on the scaffold, others in exile. In 1806, the Kingdom of Naples was given to Giuseppe Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon I, and in February of the same year the French occupied the island of Ischia, setting up safeguards to respond to the attacks of the English fleet. The French began a policy of reform: the abolition of the feudal system, the reform of the Registry and of the civil state, reforms in the administrative justice and judicial reforms, and the reform of the tax system.

In 1808 ascended the throne of Naples Gioacchino Murat, who ventured some political move independent by Napoleon, but in 1815, defeated at Tolentino and forced to abdicate, he sheltered in Casamicciola - at the Sentinella - where left again hoping to regain the kingdom. He was captured at Pizzo Calabro, was shot  by the Bourbons. After the Congress of Vienna, Ferdinand returned to Naples with the name of Ferdinand I King of the Two Sicilies, being again the two realms together. Ischia was annexed to the District of Pozzuoli and the Castle, which in 1799 had already been used as a penal colony, was annexed to the land and became official jail.

Under Francis I, King of the Two Sicilies (1825-1830), many disasters struck on the island of Ischia, including the earthquake of 1828 that reduced Casamicciola in a heap of ruins. Under Ferdinand II Ischia was also inserted into a vast program of public works: roads, telegraph cable Ischia-Continent, teh church of Portosalvo and, above all, the opening of the Port, which opened new horizons for the island's economy. In Casamicciola the Bourbons opened the beautiful "strada Ferdinandea (today Principessa Margheita), La strada Maria Teresa (today Via Garibaldi),  la Strada Regia, today called "la Borbonica" main road halfway up, which Forio, through the mud, get to the Maio. In Forio were interested  and stepped in for the dock and for the church of San Vito. The history of Ischia domination ended in 1860 with the unity of Italy.