Ischia di Castro

The old village rests on a spur of tufa ringed by the gorges of two torrents, and there is only one way in: the other three sides are defended by the rock itself. On that exposed side the Farnese put their fortress, and wanted it turned into a palace to a design by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger — a design only partly carried out. Their rule was not a quiet one: in July 1395 the people of Ischia, worn out by the abuses suffered above all by their women, stormed the fortress and killed three of the seven sons of Ranuccio Farnese; two more, a son and a nephew, they took prisoner. That nephew, freed by the siege his brothers laid or escaped to Valentano — the sources give two versions — would become the grandfather of pope Paul III.

The name seems to come from the Lombard eisch, oak, and of the Lombards there remain the place names of the countryside, a necropolis dug at La Selvicciola whose grave goods are now in the civic museum, and perhaps the August palio. A report sent to the Farnese in 1630 describes the village packed inside the old centre: thirteen hundred souls and two hundred light horsemen in sky-blue coats, «they are cramped not a little, being planted on a tufa rock». In 1649 Innocent X had Castro, the capital of the duchy, destroyed, and Ischia passed for good to the Apostolic Chamber. In 1816 the pope gave the title of marquis of Ischia to Antonio Canova, who in thanks made the village a present of a gold chalice. And in 1867 the local Garibaldians, barricaded in, forced the papal Zouaves to turn back.