Eolian Islands

Presentation

They have a strong volcanic character and on most of them some volcanic activity can still be experienced: the Gran Cratere on the island of Vulcano, finished off with sulphur smells and hot mud baths, of course, and the Stromboli.

The Aeolian Islands (Isole Eolie) lie to the north of Sicily (Mediterranean Sea - Southern Tyrrhenian Sea N38 29 16.3 E14 56 44.1) and are in the summer a main tourist resort, attracting up to 200,000 visitors.

The islands  were colonized by the Greeks around 580 BC. They named them after the God of the Wind Aeolus.

The largest island is Lipari, and the others include Vulcano, Salina and Stromboli Panarea, Filicudi and Alicudi. The town of Lipari has about 11,000 inhabitants. Vulcano is famous for its mud baths.

The Aeolian Islands have been listed by the UNESCO as World Heritage Sites

Vulcano is the southernmost island and has some hot springs, really worth visiting Lipari - the largest island with most inhabitants and the best tourist infrastructure.

But for real adventure you should head out to Stromboli

Aeolian Islands : Movies and Nature

Film makers have been using the dramatic scenery as a backdrop since the 40s, more recently the jet set moved in, but John Weich finds that the volcanic Aeolian Islands can still lay claim to being the Mediterranean's last remote paradise

The Aeolian archipelago is a cluster of seven volcanic islands ranging in size from three to 37 square kilometres whimsically scattered off the northern coast of Sicily. Lipari, Salina, Vulcano, Stromboli, Filicudi, Alicudi and Panarea are reachable almost exclusively by boat. For spoiled point-to-point travellers there are helicopter pads, but no airports. Cars are either banned or, when allowed, greatly outnumbered by loud Piaggio three-wheelers and their quieter golf cart counterparts.

Without exception, Aeolian hotels are family affairs with home cooking and friendly service. Many of the islands had no mains electricity until just over a decade ago; locals stayed in touch with the outside world by wiring radios to car batteries.

Over the last half century, this remoteness, coupled with a dramatic backdrop of white pumice cliffs and black volcanic sand has proven to be an effective potion for cinematic backdrops - from Roberto Rossellini's gorgeous but depressing Stromboli, Terra Di Dio in 1949 to Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960 masterpiece L'Avventura. More recently, Michael Radford filmed his tear-jerking Il Postino (The Postman) in the village of Pollara on the island of Salina; so great has been the influx of cinetourists to the house where Philippe Noiret's on-screen character, the poet Pablo Neruda laid low in exile, that the owners have put up a sign asking to be left alone.

Yet while cinema put the Aeolians on the map, designer doyens Dolce and Gabbana, who have a house on Stromboli, has given them status, attracting partygoers such as Naomi Campbell.

For truly unmitigated solitude you have to visit this region in the off-season when locals are busy retouching their homes and tending to the tiny vineyards that flourish in the volcanic soil. And save for a few weeks each year even the popular Panarea is comfortably empty, its stone paths hidden under hibiscus and wild caper bushes. Only Lipari, the largest island in the group and the closest to Sicily, intimates it is a serious year-round tourist mainstay, with its pervasive racks of postcards and cruise ships already moored offshore.

Most recently, tourism has reached the outermost Aeolian islands of Alicudi and Filicudi. At Filicudi's dilapidated port, the island is largely uninhabited and delightfully empty. There is no de facto centre, and the residences are spread across its 9.5 square kilometres of overgrown vegetation. Even the most fashionable spot, the black-pebble hamlet of Pecorini Mare, is decidedly low-key. In the last five years, Filicudi has become increasingly popular, but remains undeveloped due to intentionally labyrinthine building regulations.

Nearby Alicudi is protected from wide-scale development by its steep banks. The island, which markets itself as "the last remote paradise" of the Aeolians, lacks not only streetlights but streets. Regardless, forward-thinking tourists have slowly been purchasing homes on both islands.

But the true bastion of isolation in the Aeolian Islands is the village of Ginostra on the south-west side of Stromboli. It has possibly the smallest natural port in the world; there are no cars, no hotels and, until a few months ago, no electricity. For years, it has been the private domain of Europe's most exhaustive travellers, the Germans, who have done their best to keep this quiet paradise all to themselves. How they found it is not recorded, but the key probably lies in a reclusive German donkey owner who showed up 20 years ago for some R&R and never left, preferring instead the menial business of hauling visitors' luggage up and down the steep, zigzagging path.

Unfortunately, the German's days of solitude are probably numbered, and not just because of the arrival of electricity. The new, artificial port currently under construction will make the island more accessible to both hydrofoils and yachts. The German donkey owner is dismayed: "With electricity, this place is destined to become vulgar like the rest."

Vulgar, of course, is subjective. The Aeolian archipelago remains a fantastically preserved outpost and one of the few remaining places in western Europe where you can truly feel alone. It is tempting to jump in a boat and visit each island, to undertake a modern-day odyssey as depicted in Nanni Moretti's Caro Diario (1994), but don't.

In the summer, travelling by hydrofoil can be a congested and tedious affair, and though you can see your destination, it often takes hours to get there. Instead, limit yourself to one or two of the islands, and enjoy the extravagant Aeolian cuisine, its olive oil, its capers and its Malvasia.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/

The Aeolian Islands Smouldering volcanoes, bubbling mud baths and steaming fumaroles make these tiny islands north of Sicily a truly hot destination. This extract from Time Out's new Italy guide reveals the best places to eat, sleep and play

Astonishingly beautiful and extremely varied, the seven islands and various uninhabited islets of the Aeolian archipelago were designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2000. Their volcanic origins left a dramatic legacy of black-sand beaches, smouldering craters and splintered, rocky coastlines. Island-hoppers can discover their individual charms: from the spartan conical Alicudi, where donkeys are the only form of land transport, to the international jet-set playground of Panarea.

North of Sicily in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the archipelago was named after Aeolus, god of the winds, by Greek settlers. This has been a volatile part of the world ever since Filicudi, the first land mass, emerged from the sea 600,000 years ago. There are two active volcanoes, Stromboli and Vulcano, and volcanic activity of some kind, whether steaming fumaroles or thermal waters waiting to be tapped, on most of the other islands. Winter storms see the islands cut off for days.

Like many coastal communities, the islands, with a total population of 10,000, have very different characters depending on the season. The head count swells to 200,000 in summer: ports fill with yachts; bars and beaches overflow with the very beautiful and the very wealthy. In August, the rich and famous sail in to Panarea on their multi-million-euro yachts to occupy villas or €500-a-night hotel rooms, and they don't do it quietly. This is easily the most fashionable and expensive of the islands, but there is more variety in the Aeolians than a quick jaunt around Panarea's shores in peak season might lead you to believe.

Aeolian Hotel Association

http://www.eoliehotel.com/new/index.htm

Via Vittorio Emanuele, 165 - 98055 Lipari - cp 13 

Tel: +39090.98.12.894 - Fax: +390909811439

Email: info@eoliehotel.com

WHY GO ( from Condé Nast Traveller)

Once the haunt of ancient deities, the beautiful Aeolian Islands off Sicily are now worshipped for their glittering nightlife and smouldering volcanoes. They are a mixed bag of rough and sparkling jewels that attract an equally mixed crowd of Milanese magnates, Sicilian princes, families in search of a quiet holiday, an international fashion crowd and a few Italian northerners in the know. It was here in the 50s, that their bold colours and dramatic light caught the eye of director Roberto Rossellini, who filmed his new lover Ingrid Bergman on Stromboli, in the film of the same name. Stromboli still blows its top regularly, but not much else on the Aeolians has changed. And nowadays, you can party on Panarea and have thalasso treatments on Vulcano.