Ponza has been a prison for two thousand years. In Roman times Caligula banished here Agrippina the Younger and her sister Livilla after a plot, and the same fate fell to Flavia Domitilla; the island's patron, saint Silverius, was a pope who died in exile on nearby Palmarola. The Romans also left works that are still there: a tunnel cut through the tufa to reach the beach of Chiaia di Luna, cisterns able to hold about ten thousand cubic metres of water, and a mithraeum whose vault is painted with the signs of the zodiac. Emptied by Saracen and Turkish raids, the island was repopulated only from the eighteenth century onwards with settlers from Ischia and then from Campania.
The twentieth century repeated the pattern. Under fascism Ponza was a place of internal exile, and among those sent here were Pietro Nenni, Sandro Pertini, Giorgio Amendola, Amadeo Bordiga and Altiero Spinelli. Then, between the twenty-seventh of July and the seventh of August 1943, Benito Mussolini himself was held in detention on the island: on arriving he crossed in the harbour the boat carrying some prisoners just released, and among them was Nenni. Two days later, on the twenty-ninth of July, four British aircraft sank the hospital ship Santa Lucia in the sea between Ponza and Ventotene: the dead numbered between sixty-five and more than a hundred, according to the sources.
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📅 Every year, on 20 June, the climax of festivities from 9 June
Ponza celebrates Saint Silverius on 20 June, the climax of festivities beginning on 9 June. The procession leaves the Church of the Holy Trinity and proceeds first by land, then traditionally by sea.
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 Ponza, but an easy day trip away.
