The Aeolian Islands Lipari

On the routes of ancient Ausonian and Cnydian sailors, whipped and caressed by the winds, the seven enchanted isles of the Aeolian archipelago fan out from North-east Sicily.

The islands began colonised life on the arrival of Neolithic peoples who became powerful merchants from the exploitation of obssidian, a glass-like rock with hard cutting qualities. - the diamond of the ancient world.

Between the sixteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. the islands became an important merchant destination for metals, especially tin, which travelled from Britain to the Orient.

Later, during the Roman epoch, the archipelago prospered on the sulphur, alum and salt trade which however gradually declined, until the islands were abandoned following volcanic eruptions and a declaration by the Second Nicea Council that the islands were a "place of physical manifestations of a disturbing presence".

The islands were once again populated during Norman times, and have remained largely unchanged since.

Vulcano still appears like a relict of the world's prehistory, perennially fuming amid lava flows mud bubbling with gas. The eruptive mouth rises to a height of 386 metres, where the big crater, which you can get to without too much difficulty and peril, raises its crest which dominates the western and eastern harbours, the Valley of Monsters and the profiles, gradually further away, of the other islands.

Well worth a visit are the alum grottoes and the sulphur mines, where in the Bourbon epoch a population of damned people lived forced to extract the precious mineral. On the coast, in the north-western part of the island, there is the imposing Cavallo ( horse) grotto, along the wild and half-deserted shore which slopes gently down to the sea with the black Gelso beaches over which there is the euphorbia scrub and twisted prickly pear plants.

Lipari, as you approach it, appears lively and picturesque, dominated by the rocky promontory on which stands the ancient town; it has always been the heart of the archipelago. In its museum, which is one of the most interesting in the Mediterranean, there are countless vestiges of the history of the island and the successive stratifications, as in a gigantic palimpsest of a period of 5000 years of civilisation perfectly legible in the open diggings among the imposing walls with bastions.

On Lipari a volcanological tour is an absolute must, amid flows of obssidian and white expanses of pumice, materials with the same chemical composition, differing only in their state: the former hard and glassy, the latter spongy and porous, due to the sudden reduction of temperature in the magma in the final phase of eruptions.

Between Canneto and Acquacalda, two nice maritime villages not yet ruined by mass tourism, along the sea, in the direction of Punta Castagna, there lies the spectacular obssidian flow of the Rocche Rosse ( Red Rocks). Between the Pomiciazzo gorge and Lami, a lunar landscape heralds in the now inactive crater of Monte Chirica, beyond which the soft cliffs of Campobianco go down to the sea and into the crystalline waters off the Porticello beach. Likewise unrivalled are the panoramas that one can enjoy from the Quattrocchi heights towards the monumental Perciato cliffs, to the sides of which there are the picturesque " needles", beyond which there rise the gaseous and sulphurous fumes of Vulcano.

But Lipari is not only this. It is also, in the old part of the town, a nice salon from the Umberto period, against which setting there open up windows and balconies as delicate as lace, from which there descend multicoloured cascades of geraniums and delicate carnations. An island for all tastes, it offers shady gardens, scented with jasmine and basil, and sunny terraces, open to the sea, where there is perpetuated gastronomic hospitality which has its own physiognomy and traditions.

On Salina one must not fail to visit Monte Porri and Monte Fossa delle Felci. On the latter, at almost 1000 metres above sea level, the ancient crater has been colonised by gigantic aquiline ferns which are added to the luxuriant vegetation of Salina, conferring on the island an almost tropical look.

Not far away, Filicudi and Alicudi, between which there is the soaring spire of the Canna rock, stand out against the horizon.

Both distant from the din of mass tourism, they offer scope for abandon and meditation which are unthinkable at the noisy latitude of our civilisation.

Near Canna, sea beds rich in sponges and coral offer unexpected sights for those who love underwater photography.

Another highly fascinating sight in the archipelago is the basalt rocks of Basiluzzo, Dattilo and Lisca Bianca facing Panarea, with which, as Strabo tells us, they once formed a single island, Evonimos, which a cataclysm split into the present ones. Monumental solitudes characterise this group of rocks near which, from imposing mouths of submerged fumaroles, there rise gurgling bubbles of gaseous vapours which, in ancient times, where the scenario of probable worship of Hephaestus.

On Panarea, on the Cala Junca cliff, Capo Milazzese conserves intact the vestiges of a culture which here went on from 1440 to 1270 B.C., giving rise to a settlement of major archaeological interest.

Further along, Stromboli rises out of the water with the dry symmetry of its shapes perennially crowned by eruptive fumes. Its impervious Ginostra harbour is claimed to be the smallest in the world, while, beyond the fire zone, where moaning and hissing the lava touches the sea, there open up, airy and white, the villages of Piscità, Ficogrande and Scari, gathered around the white mass of the San Vincenzo church.

Beyond the very black glassy beach, where there are reeds rising from the abysses of the Tyrrhenian, there raises Strombolicchio, the primeval duct of the volcano, a fanciful natural sculpture in which fire, water and wind have left their eternal impression.