Pontine Islands

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Pontine Islands

The Pontine Islands are an archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea

Tyrrhenian Sea

The Tyrrhenian Sea is part of the Mediterranean Sea off the western coast of Italy.It is bounded by Corsica and Sardinia , Tuscany, Lazio, Campania, and Calabria , and Sicily ....
off the west coast of Italy

Italy

Ponza

Ponza is the largest of the Italy Pontine Islands archipelago, located 33 km south of Cape Circeo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It also the name of the commune of the island, a part of the province of Latina in the Lazio region....
. The other islands in the archipelago are Palmarola

Palmarola

Palmarola is a craggy, mostly uninhabited island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy. It is the second largest of the Pontine Islands and located about 10 kilometres west from Ponza....
, Zannone

Zannone

Zannone is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy, and is part of the Pontine Islands, administratively in the comune of Ponza....
, and Gavi to the northwest, Ventotene

Ventotene

Ventotene is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the coast of Campania, Italy. It is the remains of an ancient volcano, and is part of the Pontine Islands....
and Santo Stefano

Santo Stefano Island

Santo Stefano is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy, and part of the Pontine Islands. It is a circular shape, less than 500 metres in diameter, and located 2 kilometres east from the nearby island of Ventotene....
to the southeast.

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Encyclopedia

The Pontine Islands are an archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea

Tyrrhenian Sea

Italy

Ponza

Palmarola

Zannone

Zannone is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy, and is part of the Pontine Islands, administratively in the comune of Ponza....
, and Gavi to the northwest, Ventotene

Ventotene

Ventotene is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the coast of Campania, Italy. It is the remains of an ancient volcano, and is part of the Pontine Islands....
and Santo Stefano

Santo Stefano Island

Sabaudia

Sabaudia is a coastal town in the province of Latina, Lazio, central Italy. It is now a flourishing tourist resort. Sabaudia's center is characterized by several examples of Fascist-style architecture....
-Cape Circeo

Cape Circeo

Cape Circeo is a Headlands and bays at the northern end of the Gulf of Gaeta on the west coast of Italy. While the headland is quite steep and hilly, the land immediately to the east of it is very low-lying and swampy....
peninsula to Zannone the distance is 12 nautical miles, while Ventotene faces Gaeta

Gaeta

Gaeta is a city and comune in the province of Latina, in Lazio, central Italy. Set on a promontory stretching towards the Gulf of Gaeta, it is 120 km from Rome and 80 km from Naples....
(21 miles). The minimum distance between Santo Stefano and the isle of Ischia

Ischia

Ischia is a volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples. The roughly trapezoidal island lies c. 30 km from Naples and measures around 10 km east to west and 7 km north to south with a 34 km coastline and a surface area of 46.3 km?....
is 22 nautical miles.

The archipelago is the result of volcanic activity and has been inhabited for thousands of years. Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic period was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 Before the Christian Era in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age....
artifacts and Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is, with respect to a given prehistory, the period in that society when the most advanced metalworking included smelting copper and tin from naturally-occurring outcroppings of copper and tin ores, creating a bronze alloy by melting those metals together, and casting them into bronze artifact s....
obsidian

Obsidian

Obsidian is a naturally occurring glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock. It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools without crystal growth....
s have been excavated on the islands. The islands were used by the Etruscans

Etruscan civilization

Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy and Corsica whom the ancient Romans called Etrusci or Tusci....
who carved the "Blue Grottos". The earliest recorded history of the islands occurs with the Roman

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the phase of the Ancient Rome characterized by a republican form of government; a period which began with the overthrow of the Roman Roman Kingdom, c....
victory over the Volsces

Volsci

The Volsci were an ancient Italic peoples, well known in the history of the first century of the Roman Republic. They then inhabited the partly hilly, partly marshy district of the south of Latium, bounded by the Aurunci and Samnites on the south, the Hernici on the east, and stretching roughly from Norba and Cora in the north to Anzio in t...
at 338 B.C. A local legend says that this was once the lost Kingdom of Tyrrhenia which sank with a narrow strip connected to mainland Italy.

During the reign of Rome's Caesar Augustus, residential expansion on the islands was encouraged and people spread from Ponza to Ventotene. Rome used the two islands as a retreat and a place to exile politically troubling citizens. Some two thousands years later the islands were used for the same reason by the Fascist regime

Italian Fascism

The term Italian Fascism denotes the Authoritarianism Nationalism Fascismo political movement that ruled Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943 under leader Benito Mussolini....
.

The Pontine were abandoned during the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
due to constant raids by Saracen

Saracen

Saracen was a term used by Europeans in the Middle Ages for Fatimids at first, then later for all who professed the religion of Islam....
s and pirates. During the 18th century, the Kingdom of Naples

Kingdom of Naples

The Kingdom of Naples is the modern day name for a polity which existed on the southern part of the Italian peninsula. Also known contemporaneously, and somewhat confusingly, as the Kingdom of Sicily, this kingdom was founded after the secession of the island of Sicily from the old Kingdom of Sicily as a result of the Sicilian Vespers...
re-colonized the islands, that later became part of the Kingdom of Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
.

Ponza and Ventotene are populated, in the smaller islands are nobody. Ventotene and Santo Stefano are land and sea conservation areas supervised by the Italian State.

Currently, tiny vineyards, wild herbs and flowers, and secluded beaches and grotto

Grotto

A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide....
s make them a popular tourist destination.

Pontine Islands

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