If I were even a little superstitious, I might have taken the cancellation of the 8:40 a.m. hydrofoil—a ferry that cuts the two-and-a-half-hour ride from Terracina to Ponza to a 50-minute sprint—as a bad omen. The seas were rough, but delays, I assured my boys, were part of the adventure. On the recommendation of a few Italian friends, we’d planned a last-minute trip to the island of Ponza, a four-day detour within a multicity journey that included stops in Paris, Bordeaux, and Rome.
When we arrived at the hotel, a three-minute drive uphill from the port, I kept that English major’s niggling sense of foreshadowing at bay as I searched for even a glimpse of the sea from the fusty lobby, which was trying hard in all the wrong ways to live up to the hotel’s four stars. Water views on this speck of an island, the largest in the Pontine Archipelago—a cluster of former prison islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea west of Lazio that were colonized by the Romans in 313 B.C., abandoned, and then resettled by Charles III of Spain in the 18th century—are almost impossible to avoid. We followed the desk clerk as we dragged suitcases across tiled floors, kicking up plumes of plaster dust through dank corridors, to a tiny, airless room with no evidence of the view promised with our reservation. While I might have endured one night at the hotel to avoid a noisy public parade back through the lobby, my husband, Chris, scooped up our bags without a word and brought them to the entrance, leaving me to argue in Italian for a refund.
We didn’t get the refund, but the lovely manager took us to a sister property, which, he explained apologetically, had “no so many stars...ma insomma.” Gennarino a Mare is one of those classic seaside pensione-style hotels with bright, no-nonsense rooms. Out of a simple home kitchen and unadorned dining room with 270-degree water views, the hotel serves honest food made under the critical supervision of a nonna who’s earned the right to take a drag from a Marlboro Red just after lunch service. None of the regular rooms were available, but, the manager assured me as we climbed up the four narrow flights, he had something he thought we would like.
By the dim hallway light we could see that the small but freshly painted one-bedroom owner’s apartment had potential. Once the manager drew the shades and threw open the many windows that wrapped around all three sides of this seaside aerie, we realized that it was cantilevered over the water at the northern end of the island’s most photographed main port, Porto di Ponza. Our terrace also overlooked the fishing village’s central hub, the yellow church of La Chiesa di San Silverio e Santa Domitilla, as well as several sorbetto-colored houses clinging improbably to the hillside. I smiled at the familiar sight of my husband, a design and decorating enthusiast, rearranging furniture, styling bookshelves with found books and hats, and hastily fluffing pillows as though preparing for the final reveal in a home-improvement reality-TV show. By the time I returned from picking up snacks and wine in town, suitcases had been unpacked and the lights in the harbor were starting to twinkle. Chris pulled out a vase from a cupboard for the daisies I’d bought, and I located a mismatched selection of plates for a tableau of cherry tomatoes, apricots, salumi, soft and hard cheeses, and breadsticks. We sent our son downstairs to the hotel kitchen for a bucket of ice. I was reminded of the giddiness of setting up home in our first apartment in West Chelsea some 20 years earlier with a few pieces of flea market furniture.
From this moment on, we felt about Ponza—a summer destination popular as much for its proximity to Rome (one and a half hours southwest of the city, plus the ferry) as for its elemental beauty—just as the Romans themselves do. Which is to say we were immediately at home, if inexplicably so, considering that we encountered no other English speakers, let alone Americans, during our stay. At a time when it’s not uncommon to run into people you know from New York at La Fontelina in Capri or at the bar at Le Sirenuse in Positano, Ponza was exactly what we’d been dreaming of: a European family beach experience that felt as easy and unpretentious as the most quintessential all-American ones—only with way better food. Even in the most centrally located seaside restaurants it was nearly impossible to get a less-than-delicious pizza, piece of grilled fish, or plate of seafood pasta, to say nothing of the fact that we didn’t see a single menu translated into other languages. An even bigger relief was the absence of any global luxury retail. Ponza is the kind of place where you can find a no-name, high-quality white cotton button-down shirt for under 80 euros that you will have for the next 10 years. Few destinations can afford to assert their cultural identity so unselfconsciously these days.
Sometimes the sheer unfamiliarity of certain foreign experiences, compounded by a language barrier, can cause a traveler to turn inward. However, there are some places whose fundamental nonchalance unlocks your own. So when my friend Liana told us that the best way to experience Ponza is by boat, we walked three minutes from our hotel to one of the handful of boat-rental kiosks I could see from our window. She sent a follow-up text about a little restaurant in a cove of the neighboring island of Palmarola that “looks like the cove in the movie The Beach…Go for seafood lunch, by far our favorite experience.”
As we approached the boat rental, the soft-spoken boat master with an elaborately tattooed forearm and a wandering eye pointed to a brightly illustrated tourist map, tracing his finger along the western side of the island. Winds from the north and the east were kicking up whitecaps, he cautioned, trailing off midsentence with a shrug that said, You get the gist, but I’m not responsible. I had been consumed with the idea of making it to a distant island for lunch, but we decided to wait for better conditions. We rented the boat anyway, packed a small picnic, and stayed closer to the main port, on the lee side of the island. Despite plenty of other boats on the water, there was no shortage of quiet coves in which to drop anchor, among jutting limestone rock formations in impossibly clear waters that ranged from emerald and cerulean to azure, sometimes all at once. We swam, read, ate, then ended the day at the popular Spiaggia di Frontone, which is also accessible by water shuttle from the main port. Though the beach at the center of the cove literally thumps with day-trippers and dance-party music, we anchored by the quieter northern promontory and spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on rented chairs, splashing in the natural tide pools, eating gelato, and jumping off rocks until it was time to return the boat.
The next day we woke up to clear skies and a shimmering sea, and when we arrived in late morning at the same dock, all that was left of the Zodiac fleet was the owner’s cousin’s speedboat. It looked much older than the rest, but the boat master assured us it was reliable. The cartoonish paper tourist map he’d given us the day before—like a treasure map that distorts the distance between continents or the relative sizes of, say, pirate ships and palm trees—seemed to put the nearly 3-square-mile Ponza at the center of the universe. In the jaunty illustration, a string of volcanic crags, which had looked so tiny against the vast blue of the sea and mainland Lazio on my phone screen, appeared almost swimmably close.
We set out, and our tiny, waterlogged fiberglass vessel sluggishly crossed the five nautical miles of open sea to Palmarola. Admittedly, we were feeling a little cocky, owing no doubt to the fact that we both grew up sailing, and the nonchalance with which we had been given the keys to the boat, as if we were taking out bumper cars at a carnival. We made it to the northern side of the island and the dramatic La Cattedrale, a gray volcanic-rock formation named for the stone buttresses that jut from the water, and realized we’d left the paper tourist map behind. After squeezing through a harrowingly narrow pass, the shallow waters heaving with an unexpected swell—all the while maintaining our parental poker faces—we found the rocky Spiaggia della Maga Circe and the restaurant O’ Francese from sheer memory. The waves were breaking onshore, so we had to drop anchor behind the break and swim in, I with my cover-up tied to my head and clutching my wallet above the water. We tucked into a meal that we still talk about, as much for its just-caught simplicity—marinated anchovies, spaghetti alle vongole, and open-fire-grilled fish—as for its symbolism. There’s nothing quite like a meal or a glass of house white as the hard-earned reward for pushing past one’s comfort zone on foreign soil. Before dessert arrived, we watched our 14- and 11-year-olds chase each other on the beach, much as they used to when they were 8 and 5. Suddenly, my younger son came running up to the table and yelled, “Dad, come! We have to swim to the boat!” The waves were breaking farther out; the boat had drifted without our noticing and was being tossed around. The two of them sprinted into the water. I watched my son, whippet thin and tiny muscles rippling, spring into action as he climbed into the boat and pulled up the anchor.
Halfway to Ponza, we ran out of gas, at which point my older son, the more cautious one, asked, with mild panic in his eyes, “You guys do know what you’re doing, right?” But just five minutes later, after passing another boat whose driver’s nod on a cloudless summer day conferred a life-is-good nautical solidarity, he declared it “the best day ever.” Under the bow I’d located a secondary half-tank, along with oars and life vests and a couple of extra bottles of water. Though we reduced our speed considerably, we ran through the second tank just as we pulled up to the dock. We asked the boat master why he hadn’t warned us about the fuel. “This boat is a little old—you are four people, and it takes more gas,” he replied. Then, with a signature Italian open-handed shrug, he said, “You are here, aren’t you?”
Do Ponza Like an Italian
Getting There
There are hydrofoils (Navigazione Libera del Golfo, 50 minutes, around $36 each way) and ferries (Laziomar, two hours and 40 minutes, $15 each way) that leave from Terracina, Anzio, and Formia on the mainland with train connections to Rome. Anywhere you stay on the island will be a quick taxi ride from Ponza’s main port.
Where to Stay
Hotel Chiaia di Luna, named for the dramatic curved cove on which it sits, is the only real high-end hotel of any scale here. The Grand Hotel Santa Domitilla is a distant, overrated second, though part of the island’s charm is in staying in smaller properties or villas that are literally etched into the limestone. Best in B&B class is the chic, idiosyncratic, six-room Villa Laetitia—a Bourbon-era building at the foot of Monte Guardia, renovated and decorated by Anna Fendi as only the Fendi Venturini family can do (Silvia Venturini Fendi has a villa in Le Forna). The bright, four-bedroom Villa Fontana (around $1,500 per night in summer) is a good option for extended family. Simple B&Bs like Gennarino a Mare and Pensione Silvia have such unrivaled views they get a pass for their breezy, pillow-sham-less nondecor.
Where to Eat
Acqua Pazza, set back from the main port, is a white-tablecloth restaurant with outdoor tables serving slightly elevated riffs on seafood and pasta classics. Il Rifugio dei Naviganti, on the water in the center of Porto, is one of those restaurants that seems too on the nose to be good but in fact is just what you want—pizzas, grilled octopus served on slate platters (an ill-conceived nod to modernity), and seafood pastas. A Casa di Assunta, with a view of the port in the Giancos neighborhood, does a good job of not trying to fancy up its delicious fish and simple pastas (dinner only). Il Tramonto is more about the spectacular views at sunset than the food, which, apart from the zucchini pasta and grilled fish, is a tad complicated. The almost all-seafood Ristorante Eea does beautiful, just-inventive-enough flights of crudo.
What to Do
If you don’t feel comfortable renting a boat on your own, there are any number of short and long, private or group charters (Diva Luna, along the Spiaggia di Sant’Antonio in Porto, is a reliable cash-only operator). These will take you to the famous Grotte di Pilato (Pilate’s Caves), the ancient Roman fish-farming tanks (mainly moray eels) and cave pools, or neighboring islands such as Zannone, a nature preserve where you can walk through the ruins of a Cistercian monastery and swim in natural volcanic pools. You could also take a short ride to the beautiful main beach, Spiaggia di Frontone, spend the day swimming and sitting in the sun, and not get bored. Associazione Culturale Cala Frontone, “Da Gerardo,” at the beach’s northern end, serves delicious salads from plastic clamshells and sandwiches to eat on picnic tables (there’s also a proper sit-down restaurant that’s very good). Chiaia di Luna, a huge bay that backs into a dramatic tuff wall, has one of the island’s few sandy beaches. And though it’s hard to tear oneself from the water, consider a hike through the surprisingly lush landscape from Porto to the lighthouse at Punta della Guardia, or the path to an ancient Roman necropolis above Chiaia di Luna beach.