Guide of Pontine Islands

The Pontine Islands are located just off the coast of Lazio in Italy. They consist of six islands; Gavi, Zannone, Palmarola, Ventotene, Santo Stefano and Ponza, the largest, from which the archipelago takes its name. Each island of this archipelago is beautiful and tourism is not overdeveloped here. For example, Gavi and Santo Stefano are completely uninhabited and have no beaches, so tourism is not developed on these two islands. The island of Zannone, on the other hand, is inhabited only during the summer months and have some protected natural areas that are part of the Circeo National Park.

History 

The Pontine Islands were already inhabited prehistoric times and lithic artefacts have been found on the islands. The Phoenicians used the islands as an outpost for their journeys and later the Greeks probably also built some hypogeums, underground water storage and an aqueduct on the islands.  During the Roman Empire, the Pontino Archipelago was under Roman domination and is lots of architectural and archaeological evidence of this, especially on the island of Ponza. There were also other invasions from the Saracens and the Turkish. 

Places to visit

The archipelago offers many interesting places for divers to explore thanks to its wonderful seabed including the Formiche a Ponza and Ventotene Punta Pascone with lava sand. The villages overlooking the sea in the islands of Ponza and Ventotene are lively in summer when the tourists arrive.