Ponza Culture

Ponza's culture is that of a repopulated island, and it knows it.

The present inhabitants descend from 52 Ischian families — 130 people — brought here under the Bourbon colonisation after the island had stood practically uninhabited for about two centuries because of Saracen raids. Almost every other Lazio destination can trace continuity; Ponza cannot, and its population is a deliberate eighteenth-century import.

Its patron is a pope who died next door. Silverius died on nearby Palmarola in 537 and is still patron of the Comune di Ponza, celebrated on 20 June.

And the island holds the other half of a legend. Ponza is suspected to be Aeaea in Homer's Odyssey, the island of Circe the sorceress, whose cave is on the west coast between Capo Bianco and Chiaia di Luna and is called the Grotta della Maga Circe. The tradition says she lived in that cave in the winter months and spent her summers atop Monte Circeo on the mainland — which is why the promontory at San Felice Circeo is read as her profile. The two places share one myth.

Its local tragedies have names. The Faraglioni di Lucia Rosa are called after a nineteenth-century event: Lucia Rosa, a young woman of nineteen, in love with a poor peasant and prevented from marrying him by her family's opposition, threw herself from the high cliff in despair, and the islanders renamed the rocks for her.

And the modern island's culture is a sea economy. Beach tourism is the driving sector, some islanders still fish, and viticulture persists on a smaller scale — agricultural activity having fallen away considerably since tourism developed.