Here the Greeks landed around 770 BC and founded Pithecusa, the oldest Greek settlement in the West. The name comes from píthekos, monkey: land of the monkeys. Nobody believes there were monkeys on Ischia, and the explanations swing between a mocking nickname given to the inhabitants the colonists found and the Greek legends of men turned into monkeys by Zeus. Lacco, on the other hand, comes from the Greek lákkos, cistern or pit. The adjective that completes the name is recent and was asked for: on 18 November 1862 the town council petitioned the king to be allowed to add «Ameno», pleasant, and a ministerial decree granted it on 4 January 1863.
On 28 July 1883 the earthquake that struck Lacco Ameno and Casamicciola killed more than two thousand three hundred people: here 269 houses came down, about seventy per cent of the buildings, and only 18 were left undamaged. The town lived by fishing, with a tuna fishery set up in 1501 by the young Federico of Aragon, which lasted until 1959. Then came Angelo Rizzoli, who in the nineteen-fifties and sixties built the luxury hotels, took Villa Arbusto as his own house, used his newspapers and his films to make the island known, and in 1962 paid for the only hospital Ischia has, naming it after his wife Anna.
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📅 Every year, on 16, 17 and 18 May, with solemn festivities at the basilica
Lacco Ameno celebrates Saint Restituta on 17 May, with solemn festivities from 16 to 18 May in the basilica dedicated to her, raised to the dignity of minor basilica by John Paul II in 2001.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Lacco Ameno, but an easy day trip away.
