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.