Aeolian Islands charter
Seven days
AEOLIAN ISLANDS
The story
The islands of Aeolus, king of the winds, who in the Odyssey hands Ulysses the bag of winds: seven volcanoes risen from the Tyrrhenian Sea. Here, from 5500 BC, the obsidian of Lipari was the Mediterranean's first trade; in 1544 Barbarossa sacked Lipari and Charles V ringed it with bastions; in 2000 UNESCO listed the islands as a model of how volcanology evolved — "Vulcanian" and "Strombolian" are words born here. In 1950 Rossellini shot Stromboli with Ingrid Bergman; in 1994 Massimo Troisi finished Il Postino at Pollara, on Salina, twelve hours before he died.
Vulcano
See: the Gran Cratere (an hour's climb, last eruption 1890; views over all seven islands and Mount Etna) and the Pozza dei Fanghi mud pools, reopened in 2025. Eat: grilled fish at the Porto di Levante with a dry Malvasia — or the two Michelin stars of I Tenerumi at Vulcanello.
Lipari
See: the Castle with its Norman cathedral and the Museo Archeologico Eoliano (Bernabò Brea): the grave goods of 3,000 Greek tombs and the world's largest collection of terracotta theatre masks. From the sea: the white pumice quarries and Spiaggia Bianca, the obsidian Rocche Rosse. Eat: pasta all'eoliana with capers and olives, stuffed totani (flying squid); mulberry granita.
Salina
See: the bay of Pollara, half a crater fallen into the sea, and Neruda's red house from the film; the Fossa delle Felci, the highest peak of the Aeolians. Drink: Malvasia delle Lipari DOC in the wineries that brought it back to life — Hauner (since 1963), Caravaglio, Tasca d'Almerita's Capofaro. Eat: the Salina caper, a Slow Food Presidium, and the pane cunzato (dressed bread) at Da Alfredo in Lingua, as big as a pizza, with a mulberry granita beside the salt lagoon that gives the island its name. The hostess brings it on board.
Panarea
See: Cala Junco and the Bronze Age village of Capo Milazzese (14th century BC, pottery with Minoan influences); the islets of Basiluzzo with their Roman villa; the underwater fumaroles between Lisca Bianca and Bottaro, for snorkelling. Evening: aperitivo on the flybridge facing the lights of the Raya.
Stromboli
See: the Sciara del Fuoco — the volcano's fiery slope — by night, from the sea, with the hostess serving dinner as the mountain lights up: the image no photograph can capture. Strombolicchio, the lighthouse on the volcanic neck. Ginostra, forty inhabitants, no roads, and "the smallest harbour in the world". The crater can be climbed only with a guide up to 400 m; the summit is off limits.
Filicudi and Alicudi
See: Capo Graziano, twenty-seven huts from 1700 BC; the Grotta del Bue Marino, the largest sea cave in the Aeolians, by tender; the La Canna sea stack, 70 metres tall. Alicudi: no roads, ten thousand steps, mules. Eat: at Pecorini a Mare, the catch of the day.
The LUX week in the Aeolian Islands
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