Ischia by heart: the Aragonese Castle

 

Going to the castle was not a choice of mine, really: I just HAD TO go.

The medieval castle has a long story and full of events(it's incredibly old), but what I wanted to see was the inside of the ramparts. The traces of real life left inside the walls. And I did get to see them...for better or worse (sometimes). The torture museum I could have skipped, for instance, but these are the risks when you travel with a thick guide you don't check before leaving the hotel room.

It's been an alternation of light and darkness from the very beginning, starting with the tunnel that guided me in. Needless to say they have an elevator there that I didn't take and went up hill on that path that most people were getting downhill. (Ahem...)

A spot that stayed in my heart was the church built inside the castle, or at least, what's left of it.

Full of light and charming details, the crumbling stone makes peace with time in such a graceful way.

I haven't seen a castle that maintained so much of its original history, including mini farms and wineries. Oh, yes, I've even seen the chicken coop.

 They don't grow vegetables anymore, but there are orange trees and lemon trees at every corner and vineyard on the slopes around the island.

 Interesting: the interiors were wide and open, you could see all around

 and the outside trailers were narrow

 and some of them even ended surprisingly soon...

But the pathways inside the walls can take you anywhere you want: you can still see where they were making the wine, the oil and where they were storing everything. All this at a small scale.

 The Clarisses convent is still neat and full of flowers, but after enjoying the outside...

... I ended up in the nun's cemetery. Probably the most peculiar one I've seen so far, with its chairs  carved in stone and (not enough) room for the living nuns to meditate in such a company - their deceased sisters.

When I got out I was happy to see the sun again, feel the wind, smell the sea and look at the boats.

And think how well they managed to balance all in such a small spot: humans, plants, live stock, wine and oil, churches and torture chambers, cellars of many kinds, life and death in a self sufficient blending pot.

Ischia on foot

The Amalfi coast was bound to happen to us too. It is too rocky and close to the sea in the same time, full of history and bright colors. So it has a bit of everything for each and both of us to enjoy. 

And Ischia...well it just happened to be that one spot from where we could move around. And what a wonderful place it proved to be.

 Perfect for wanderers like us, who first go ahead and then check the map to see where they've ended up.

The big oleanders on either side of the street made me wonder about the color and the fragrance they'd add up to the place when in bloom, but now was not really their moment.

Instead, it smelled like lemon. Everywhere. And I could see why... Almost every garden had a lemon tree.

Colorful enough by nature, the hand-painted tiles make a perfect match for this place

We let ourselves driven by colors, the changing (and tricky for a rookie photographer like me) light, but at the end of the day I knew we'd have to make it to Forio. Because of them.

 So we got to Soccorso church. Yes, the one with a nice parenting lesson for us, never-patient-enough-parents. Yes, the little white church against the silver blue of the sea and the sky.

But I was there for something else. So we sat down just to see the sunset building up and the clouds gathering, the light shifting from silver to golden. And then I knew what I wanted to do on our last evening on the island:

 ...come back here once more.