The smallest of the island municipalities in terms of surface area stretches on the thin strip of coast dotted by the very famous tuffaceous rock in the shape of a Mushroom,
And it is one of the ideal landing place for boating. Lacco Ameno became the pearl of elite holidays thanks to Angelo Rizzoli, who enhanced the thermal asset worldwide, and it is still the beating heart of the prestigious hotels in the area. The toponym comes from laccos which means basin, valley. The small hamlet is indissolubly linked to what happened around the middle of the 8th century BC., when the Greeks coming from Chalcis and Eretria, important centres of the island of Euboea, landed and founded Pithekoussai there. They chose the promontory of the Mount of Vico, easy to defend, and with a rather flat surface which was suitable for raising the acropolis. Then the necropolis developed in the valley of San Montano, a metallurgical district in Mazzola, on the hill of Mezzavia and the landings. The site was identified by the priest and physicist of Lacco Ameno, Francesco De Siano (1740-1813), whose theses have been confirmed by the excavations and the studies of the great Georg Buchner, by the priest-archeologist Pietro Monti and by David Ridgway. Experts in vase art, the Greeks used the clayey deposits of the island, giving life to a thriving pottery industry: firstly, they repeated the euboic shapes, then they enriched up to the production of vases typically from Pithekoussai. They also specialised as iron modelers, imported from the island of Elba, and they showed to be able to process precious objects. The archaeological excavations, carried out on the slopes of Mount of Vico have also revealed a temple from the Republican age and a gymnasium enclosed by parapets in opus reticulatum, signs of a Roman village of the 1st century BC. The complex, called Eraclius, was the centre of life of the village. An set of finds suggest the presence of a Christian community, ready to host the body of Santa Restituta, the Carthaginian martyr who, according to a 11th century story, was buried «in loco qui dicitur Eraclius»: the saint is the other patron saint of the island of Ischia.
The centre of Lacco Ameno is, in fact, Piazza Santa Restituta: from ancient times if keeps a strong religious particularity, well evidenced by the singular story of the temples which were built and by the spiritual and intellectual path of Father Pietro Monti, the priest-archaeologist, who helped to reveal the secrets of the past. The Sanctuary of Santa Restituta is distinguished by a so-called “big” church, built by the Carmelites with the adjoining convent; and the small church and the little basilica obtained from a Roman edifice. In the complex of the Sanctuary there are also the Excavations and the Museum of Santa Restituta: they are an example of excavation areas which have become autonomous museums. A fascinating underground museum. The excavations show the signs left by the humans in the intertwining succession of the past cultures: it is a visual section of the island’s history, from prehistory to the Greek-Hellenistic-Roman period until to the remains of the first Christianity.
From the excavations, the Archaeological Museum of Villa Arbusto is a must see, thanks to which the mythical “Alba of Magna Grecia” has become a visible testimony. The museum is divided into thematic rooms which contain, in fact, also the most significant finds of the settlement founded by the Greeks. The populations of central Italy borrowed he alphabet precisely from the Greeks of Pithekoussai, as the three-verse epigram engraved after cooking on a famous cup which refers, in Euboic, to the famous Nestor’s Cup described in the Iliad. Glimpses of an era of intense traffic and a strong political importance which started to decline only after the development of Cuma.
In the small Lacco Ameno, from the Angelo Rizzoli seafront to the gentle hillsides, we breathe a both noble and popular atmosphere , moving to the village of Fango, with the church of San Giuseppe. Returning to the coast, finally, we cannot escape the bulk of the Montevico Tower, built by Alfonso I of Aragon (15th century) as a watchtower and a defense against the Saracen raids.
