Augustus had a villa built on the northern point of the island, and there he sent his daughter Julia into exile. After her came other inconvenient women: Agrippina the Elder, sent by Tiberius; Octavia, cast out by Nero; Flavia Domitilla, exiled by her uncle Domitian for being a Christian. The island emptied in the seventh century and stayed empty until the Bourbons, from 1768, repopulated it with convicts, courtesans and then settlers.
Confinement came back with fascism: in 1940 the island held nine hundred internees and three hundred policemen, and almost the whole of Italian anti-fascism passed through. In 1941 three of them — Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni — wrote the manifesto «For a free and united Europe», which lies at the root of the idea of the European Union. Ventotene is the smallest municipality in Lazio.
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📅 Every year, on 20 September
On 20 September Ventotene celebrates its patron Saint Candida, killed according to tradition by the Romans, her body found on the island's coast; the feast closes with the procession of her boat and a paper hot-air balloon contest.
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 Ventotene, but an easy day trip away.
