The Islands through the Ages

In terms of settlements, conquests, and dominion, the history of the islands echoes that of Campania's mainland. For eastern Mediterranean traders in the second and first millennia BC, Capri and Ischia were both close enough to the mainland to provide easy access to trade routes and impervious enough to afford natural protection against invaders.

Ischia, or Pithekoussai, as it used to be called—a word probably derived from the Greek term for a large earthenware jar (pithos) rather than the less plausible word, pithekos, meaning monkey—is renowned in classical circles as the first colony founded by the Greeks on Italian soil, as early as the 8th century BC.

Capri, probably colonized in the 7th century BC, a century or so later than Ischia, is amply described in the early years of the Roman Empire by authors such as Suetonius and Tacitus, as this was the island where Tiberius spent the last 10 years of his life.

After the breakup of the Roman Empire, the islands, like many other parts of the Mediterranean, suffered a succession of incursions. Saracens, Normans, and Turks all laid siege to the islands at some stage, between periods of relative stability under the Swabians, the Angevins, the Aragonese, and the Spanish.

After a short interregnum under the French at the beginning of the 19th century, a period of relative peace and prosperity ensued. Over the next century, from the opening of its first hotel in 1822, Capri saw an influx of visitors which reads like a "who's who" of literature and politics, especially in the first decades of the 20th century. Ischia and Procida established themselves as holiday resorts much later, with development taking place from the 1950s onward.