Everyone plans the Amalfi Coast. Everyone books Capri. And honestly? Fair enough. But there’s this island sitting right there in the Gulf of Naples, around 45 minutes by hydrofoil from the port, that quietly blows both of them out of the water in ways most first-time Italy visitors never expect. That island is Ischia. And the number of travelers who fly home without ever setting foot on it is, quite frankly, a tragedy.

When you visit Ischia, something shifts. It’s not the polished, look-at-me beauty of Capri. It’s older than that. Wilder. There are volcanic hot springs bubbling up from the seafloor, a medieval castle you can literally spend the night inside, subtropical gardens planted by a composer who moved here and never left, and a volcano you can hike before lunch. Six miles wide and somehow crammed with all of that.

For anyone already exploring the Amalfi Coast with us, which is exactly the kind of traveler this guide is written for, Ischia isn’t a detour. It’s the missing piece. And the good news? Getting there from Sorrento or Naples is far easier than most people think.

Here are the 9 attractions that make it unmissable.

1. Castello Aragonese: The One That Stops You Mid-Sentence

There are landmarks you read about and then see and think, “Okay, sure.” And then there’s Castello Aragonese, which rises from a volcanic rock just off Ischia’s eastern shore and makes people genuinely stop talking in the middle of whatever sentence they were saying. Alfonso of Aragon connected it to the main island by a stone causeway in 1441, but the Greeks had already been fortifying this rock since the 5th century BC. So the history here goes deep.

At its peak, around 2,000 people lived inside this complex. Nuns, monks, nobility, and common people riding out invasions. There’s still a convent inside whose ossuary (where deceased nuns were propped up in chairs as a meditation on mortality, because the 18th century was intense) remains one of the more quietly haunting things on the island. 

The walk through takes you past carved volcanic corridors, roofless churches with frescoes fading beautifully into the walls, terraced gardens growing citrus and olives, and views that keep ambushing you around corners.

Oh, and at the very top? Il Terrazzo Bar serves aperitivo with what might genuinely be the best unobstructed view in this entire region.

Practical Info
Opening Hours
Details: Daily, 9am to sunset

Entrance Fee
Details: €12 adults / Children under 9 free

Getting There
Details: Bus Line #7 from Ischia Porto (15 mins) or a 20-minute walk along the waterfront

Don’t rush this one. Give it two hours minimum. Most people wish they’d given it three.

2. Baia di Sorgeto: A Free Hot Spring That Doesn’t Feel Real

Look, thermal parks on Ischia can run from €30 to €40 per person. Which is fine, they’re beautiful. But Sorgeto exists, and Sorgeto is free, which feels almost unfair when you see what it actually is. Hot volcanic water seeps straight out of the rock at the edge of the sea, pooling in natural stone basins where it mixes with cold Mediterranean saltwater into something that feels exactly like a warm bath placed at the edge of the world.

The rocks close to the water line can hit temperatures over 60°C near the active vents, so the first rule is to watch where you step. Locals have been using the hotter sections to cook eggs and shellfish for as long as anyone can remember, which says something about how serious the heat gets. 

But find the right pool where the temperatures have mixed out, and you’re soaking in geothermally heated seawater with the open sea directly in front of you, it costs nothing, and the sky above is that particular shade of southern Italian blue that doesn’t quite exist anywhere else.

Getting there means either walking down 234 steep stone steps from the village of Panza (someone definitely counted) or taking a water taxi from Sant’Angelo for about €7 each way. Going at night, under actual stars, with the water still warm? That’s the move. Honestly, one of the most memorable things a person can do on any boat tour from the Gulf of Naples.

3. Giardini La Mortella: The Gardens That Started With a Bombed-Out Quarry

Here’s a story that sounds made up but isn’t. After World War II, British composer William Walton came to Ischia and fell completely in love with the island. His wife Susana, who was Argentinian and apparently had an extraordinary eye for potential, looked at a ruined volcanic quarry on the cliffs near Forio and saw gardens.

Starting in 1958, she spent decades building them. And what she built is now considered by many botanists and garden historians to be the finest subtropical garden in all of southern Italy.

Giardini La Mortella covers over 20,000 square meters. It’s divided between a valley section that gets genuinely jungle-like with humidity and shade (hundreds of rare ferns, palms, cycads, things you’d expect to find in Sri Lanka or Brazil), and an upper Mediterranean terrace with open views and the sea beyond.

There’s a small museum about the Waltons’ extraordinary life on Ischia, a tearoom, and on weekends during the season, concerts happen in a hidden stone amphitheater tucked into the gardens. Classical music surrounded by rare plants on a Mediterranean hillside. Which sounds like a cliché until you’re actually there.

Practical Info
Open Days
Details: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday only

Hours
Details: 9am to 7pm (last entry 6pm)

Tickets
Details: €12 adults / €10 seniors and teens / €7 children 6-11 / Under 5 free

Location
Details: Near Forio, served by local buses from Ischia Porto

Go on a Saturday. Arrive early enough to walk the whole garden before it gets warm. Then stay for the afternoon concert. That’s a perfect day, right there.

4. Monte Epomeo: Because Hiking a Dormant Volcano Before Lunch Is Perfectly Normal Here

Monte Epomeo doesn’t let you forget it exists. At 789 meters, it dominates the island’s skyline from every angle. A broad volcanic peak covered in terraced vineyards and scrub, with the characteristic yellow-grey tuff rock of the summit visible from miles out at sea.

The last serious eruption was in 1302, though smaller events happened after that. But that volcanic history is what makes Ischia what it is, and reaching the top is one of the more rewarding half-days a traveler can spend here.

The standard route starts from Fontana, a small inland village, which the CS or CD bus reaches from Ischia Porto. From there, it’s about 3km to the summit on a well-marked trail. The first section winds through vineyards and farmland. The middle section gets steeper, more exposed, and the tuff underfoot starts crumbling satisfyingly under boots.

The final stretch involves actual scrambling over volcanic rock that gets slippery when wet. But the summit view on a clear day stretches from Ischia and Procida all the way to Capri, the Sorrentine Peninsula, the hills above Naples, and occasionally (apparently) even to the Pontine Islands far to the north.

At the very top, a tiny restaurant and bar is carved into the rock itself. And the figs growing along the path down in late summer are an unexpected highlight that nobody mentions but really should be mentioned more. If volcanic landscapes fascinate you, by the way, a Tour of Pompeii and Vesuvius on the mainland pairs extraordinarily well with an Ischia trip. Same volcanic story, completely different scale.

5. Sant’Angelo: The Village With No Cars and Too Much Charm

Most of Ischia has cars. Sant’Angelo, on the island’s southern coast, does not. No vehicles are permitted in the village proper, and that single decision changes everything about the atmosphere. The lanes are narrow and painted in washed-out pinks and yellows and terracotta.

Fishing boats sit in the little harbor. A thin sandy isthmus connects the village to a dramatic rocky promontory. Restaurants put tables out on waterfront terraces where the only sounds are water and conversation.

It’s the kind of place that makes you recalculate how long you were planning to stay.

From Sant’Angelo, water taxis run constantly to Maronti Beach (Ischia’s longest stretch of sand, nearly 2 miles of it) and to the Baia di Sorgeto hot springs. A short walk from the harbor leads to Le Fumarole Beach, where volcanic gas bubbles visibly through the seafloor at temperatures close to 100°C, and you can essentially cook things in the sand. Which is exactly as strange and spectacular as it sounds.

Come in the late afternoon. Walk out to the promontory at dusk. Find a table with a sea view and order the local white wine (Biancolella grape, grown on the volcanic soil of Ischia, surprisingly excellent) and whatever the kitchen is doing with fresh-caught fish that evening. It has exactly the same unhurried energy as the smaller villages you find on a full-day Amalfi Coast private tour, except with hot springs involved.

6. Negombo Thermal Park: Thirteen Pools and a Story That Starts in Sri Lanka

The name comes from a city in Sri Lanka. Duke Luigi Silvestro Camerini founded this park in 1947 and named it after the place that inspired the lush tropical planting throughout the gardens. He brought in exotic species from Japan, Australia, South Africa, and Brazil.

Then he added pools. Thirteen of them, each at a different temperature, each positioned differently in the landscape, so moving through them feels like a journey rather than just a sequence of warm water.

Negombo sits in the sheltered bay of San Montano in Lacco Ameno, which gives it a private beach as well as the thermal pools. There’s a spa center, a seawater pool, a Turkish bath, and sculptures by serious Italian artists (including Arnaldo Pomodoro, whose work sells for significant sums at auction) placed throughout the gardens. The whole thing sits somewhere between an art-and-nature experience and a wellness resort. That distinction matters more than it might sound.

And this is where it gets almost absurd: the arena here has hosted Miles Davis, Tina Turner, and Ray Charles. In a thermal park. On a volcanic island in the Gulf of Naples. Somehow, this all makes complete sense once you’ve actually been to Ischia.

Practical Info
Location
Details: Via San Montano 8, Lacco Ameno

Season
Details: Late April through October

Key Highlights
Details: 13 thermal pools / Private beach / Japanese labyrinth pool / Turkish bath / Tropical botanical gardens

7. Giardini Poseidon: The Thermal Park That Commits Fully to Scale

If Negombo is the refined, botanical, intimate thermal experience, Giardini Poseidon in Forio’s Citara Bay is the one that goes big. Over 20 pools. Temperatures ranging from 16°C all the way up to 40°C. A sauna carved into a tufa rock cave.

A Kneipp course with alternating hot and cold water is designed to get circulation moving properly. A private stretch of Citara Beach that comes included in the entry price, which is a genuinely good beach in its own right and not just a bonus afterthought.

Poseidon has been operating since 1958 and has aged with unusual grace. The restaurant now runs on a plastic-free policy. The architecture uses natural materials throughout. And there’s something about the scale of it, all these pools terraced into the hillside above a beautiful bay, that somehow avoids feeling overwhelming and instead feels generous. Half a day planned here reliably becomes a full day. Nobody seems surprised when this happens.

Practically speaking, Poseidon is close to Giardini La Mortella in Forio, which makes combining both in a single day on the western coast of the island an easy and genuinely excellent decision. And if you’re the type who appreciates combining excellent scenery with really good food and wine, the Amalfi Coast Tour and Cooking Class on the mainland runs on the same philosophy. Different island, same spirit.

8. Maronti Beach: Volcanic Sand, Roman Thermal Caves, Two Miles of Sea

At nearly 2 miles long, Maronti is Ischia’s biggest beach and the one that appears in the photographs that make people decide to visit Ischia in the first place. The sand is golden. The water moves through three or four distinct shades of blue-green before it deepens. The cliffs rising at both ends create a feeling of natural enclosure, as the beach exists in its own small world apart from everything.

But what makes Maronti genuinely different from every other long Italian beach isn’t the sand or the water. It’s the fumaroles. Volcanic steam rises from the sand near the cliff base at the eastern end. Bubbles come up through the seafloor in specific spots.

And a short walk inland leads to the Cavascura gorge, where Roman-era thermal baths are carved directly into the rock, still functioning, still using the same volcanic steam that Romans were bathing in roughly 2,000 years ago. The natural saunas created inside the rock alcoves are something between a geological phenomenon and an extremely old wellness trend. Remarkable, honestly.

Access from Sant’Angelo by water taxi is the easiest option. Buses from Barano d’Ischia also work. Both the free public sections of the beach and the beach clubs operate here, and arriving by water taxi in August without a reservation means competing for space in a way that gets stressful fast. 

Speaking of arriving by sea, if you want to experience the entire Gulf of Naples coastline from the water (which is genuinely a different thing), our boat tours depart from Sorrento, Naples, Amalfi, Positano, and Salerno throughout the season.

9. Forio and the Church of Santa Maria del Soccorso: Show Up at Sunset. Just Do It.

Forio is Ischia’s second-largest town and the one that tends to grow on visitors more slowly than the others. It’s not immediately flashy. But the lanes around the historic center reward wandering.

There are artisan workshops, genuinely good restaurants that feel more local than tourist-facing, and excellent gelato (the kind of specific detail that actually matters when spending a full day somewhere). And the town has a thermal park on either side of it; Poseidon to the south and La Mortella to the north, which makes it a logical base for that entire stretch of the western coast.

But the single thing Forio does better than anywhere else on Ischia has nothing to do with any of that. On a rocky promontory at the town’s western edge stands the Church of Santa Maria del Soccorso, white as chalk, its facade pointing directly west over the open Tyrrhenian Sea.

On clear evenings, the sun sets directly in line with that view. And occasionally, in exactly the right atmospheric conditions, the very last instant before the sun drops below the horizon produces what’s known as the “green ray”: a brief, electric flash of emerald light that lasts maybe a second.

Locals attach wishes to it. There are traditions around it that go back further than anyone can properly trace. It may or may not appear on any given evening, and most visitors never see it. But the sunset from that terrace, green ray or not, is the kind of thing that makes arriving on this island feel like a quietly correct decision.

How to Plan Your Time: A Quick Reference

Trip Length & What to Prioritise
Half-Day
What to Prioritise: Castello Aragonese + swim at Spiaggia dei Pescatori nearby

Full Day
What to Prioritise: Castle in the morning / Negombo or Poseidon thermal park in the afternoon

2 Days
What to Prioritise: Add Sorgeto, Sant’Angelo village, Giardini La Mortella

3+ Days
What to Prioritise: All 9 above, plus the Monte Epomeo hike and a boat tour around the full island coastline

Getting to Ischia From the Amalfi Coast and Naples

From Naples, ferries depart from Porta di Massa (slower, better for luggage) and hydrofoils from Beverello (about 45 minutes, much more practical for a day trip). Book ahead in summer. Seriously, don’t assume you’ll just turn up and get on.

From the Amalfi Coast and Sorrento, seasonal hydrofoil connections run from May through September. This is the detail that matters most for travelers already in this part of Campania: Ischia is not a separate trip that requires a separate plan. 

It’s a ferry ride away. A morning departure from Sorrento can have you in the thermal waters at Sorgeto by midday and back on the Amalfi Coast in time for dinner. If you’re still figuring out how to get around the region, our private transfer service connects all the main ports and towns with door-to-door comfort.

When to Go

May, June, and September are when the quality of the Italian experience peaks. All the thermal parks are open. Ferries run full summer schedules. The sea is warm enough for real swimming. And the crowds, while present, haven’t yet reached the July-August levels where booking everything well in advance becomes genuinely non-negotiable.

That said, Sorgeto is open year-round. And bathing in a hot volcanic spring by the sea in November, with steam rising off the water and almost nobody else around, is an experience that deserves far more attention than it typically gets. It’s a bit like what we covered in our Amalfi Coast in December travel guide: the off-season in this part of Italy rewards the people willing to show up.

The honest case for visiting Ischia is a simple one. The Amalfi Coast is spectacular and rightly famous. Capri is glamorous and genuinely beautiful. But when you visitare Ischia, you find the version of southern Italy that hasn’t fully decided to perform for visitors yet. And that difference, right now, is worth more than almost anything else a traveler can find in this part of the world. Want to build a trip that combines Ischia with the best of the Amalfi Coast? Browse all our private tours and get in touch; our team knows this region better than anyone.

Planning a trip to southern Italy? Exploring Amalfi Coast offers private tours, boat excursions, and transfers across the Gulf of Naples region; from the Amalfi Coast to Pompeii, Capri, Sorrento, and beyond.