Ischia is the largest island in the Bay of Naples. The Castle, built by Alphonso V of Aragon in the fifteenth century, is distant 16 miles from the Punta di Posillipo, and 20 miles from the Mole of Naples; it is famous in Italian annals for its long association with the noble poetess Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara. Mount Epomeo, the Epopos of the Greeks, the Epopeus of the Latin poets, rises near the centre of the island. The ancient fable made Ischia the bed of Typhoeus. Ischia, called Aenaria, Inarime, and Pithecusa by the ancients, was populated in earliest times by a colony composed partly of Erythraeans and partly of Chalcidicans: they fixed their home where now stands the village of Lacco Ameno, one of the most beautifully picturesque of the whole island. Strabo, Pliny, Statius and other authors mention the therapeutic virtues of the hot springs of Ischia. The number of foreigners, travellers and Neapolitan gentlemen attending Ischia is very considerable.

A vibrant, diverse history of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the age of Romanticism Vesuvius is best known for its disastrous eruption of 79CE. But only after 1738, in the age of Enlightenment, did the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii reveal its full extent. In an era of groundbreaking scientific endeavour and violent revolution, Vesuvius became a focal point of strong emotions and political aspirations, an object of geological enquiry, and a powerful symbol of the Romantic obsession with nature. John Brewer charts the changing seismic and social dynamics of the mountain, and the meanings attached by travellers to their sublime confrontation with nature. The pyrotechnics of revolution and global warfare made volcanic activity the perfect political metaphor, fuelling revolutionary enthusiasm and conservative trepidation. From Swiss mercenaries to English entrepreneurs, French geologists to local Neapolitan guides, German painters to Scottish doctors, Vesuvius bubbled and seethed not just with lava, but with people whose passions, interests, and aims were as disparate as their origins.