ISLAND OF WONDER PANTELLERIA
Pantelleria
Volcanic, windswept, quietly magnetic. Italy's last true island escape, 40 miles from Tunisia and a world away from everywhere else.
"I can't tell you how much I love this island: the mehari adventures, the delicious caponata and cous cous, the North African winds, fuchsia-coloured sunsets, starry starry nights and deep blue sea."
If you follow me on Instagram, you would have seen some of my stories from a holiday to Pantelleria, last year for my friend's 40th birthday. We followed @wildkitchens on his wild culinary adventures around the island: choosing the right fish, locating the tastiest capers and cherry tomatoes, hunting for the best natural ingredients, and tasting the well-known Passito di Pantelleria. This was the island I had been dreaming of since it backdropped Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash in 2015.
This volcanic island sits 62 miles southwest of Sicily and approximately 40 miles from Tunisia. Its name derives from "Bent el Riah," which in Arabic means Daughter of the Wind. Once home to the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans, the island became an agricultural stronghold more than a thousand years ago with the arrival of the Arabs, who cultivated cotton, figs, and olives and designed the dammusi with gently domed roofs to collect rainwater. Pantelleria's nutrient-rich volcanic soil has helped the flora adapt to sparse rainfall; evidence of its fiery origins, dating back some 250,000 years, lingers in the hot springs studding the seabed just off the coast.
While summer crowds flock to Capri, Pantelleria remains raw, remote, and powerfully magnetic. Its history is painted into the terraced hillsides planted with zibibbo grapevines, olive groves, and the island's caper bushes, and in its North African-inspired architecture: domed roofs, arched doorways, enclosed courtyards, and circular stone giardini panteschi shielding citrus trees from the relentless scirocco winds.
"While it has long been a favourite destination for fashion insiders like Giorgio Armani, the island is now welcoming an emerging creative type, reflected in its design hotels, artist residencies, and culinary styles."
On Pantelleria nowThe best way to experience a stay on Pantelleria is by renting a dammuso: villas built from the island's dark volcanic rock, with domed roofs that keep you cool in summer and are, frankly, gorgeous. You scooter from one to the next. You stop when something catches your eye. You are across the island in thirty minutes and somehow it takes all day.
The food is incredible and so unique. The capers are unlike any you will taste elsewhere, grown in volcanic soil, intensely flavoured, preserved in salt. The cherry tomatoes have a sweetness that makes you understand why someone would cross the Mediterranean for them. The caponata, the cous cous, the freshest fish: everything carries the taste of a place that has been feeding people seriously for a very long time.
di Venere
Often called the Specchio di Venere, Mirror of Venus, this is the island's free and natural open-air spa. The thermal spring lake is formed in the crater of an extinct volcano, its bed covered in thermal mud that is healing for the skin.
The waters are warm but not hot, sulphurous but not smelly. Here you spread the mud on your skin and let it dry lying under the hot sun. You immerse yourself again in the lake's waters and emerge cleansed. The mud is prized for its mineral-rich, skin-softening properties said to improve circulation, draw out impurities, and leave a radiant glow. It costs nothing. It is one of the most beautiful things on the island.
Villas carved from dark volcanic rock with domed roofs originally designed to collect rainwater. Cool in summer, architectural in every season. Renting one is the only way to stay.
The island's caper bushes produce some of the finest capers in the world. The Passito di Pantelleria, made from zibibbo grapes dried in the volcanic sun, is a wine unlike anything made anywhere else.
The North African scirocco winds are relentless. The island's circular stone gardens, giardini panteschi, were built to shield citrus trees from the wind. They are ancient, beautiful, and completely specific to this island.
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