L’Albergo della Regina Isabella Spa-Ischia, Campania, is a dream place you could ever imagine.
Drenched in a jacuzzi of warm mineral-rich water until your fingers get pruney and your bones turn to rubber is a divine way to bliss out at L’Albergo della Regina Isabella in Ischia. Get a room with a private terrace, where from your outdoor tub you watch fishing boats float by and the only sounds are the lapping of the sea and the sporadic church bell. Queen Isabella of Spain came to these springs in the nineteenth century, pregnant and needing R&R.
Before her visit, the waters were named after Santa Restituta, whose body washed ashore nearby in the third century, but the Queen’s stay was apparently such a major deal they became known as Regina Isabella in her honor. Women have left their mark all over Ischia. As you ferry in from Naples, you’ll see the castle of Vittoria Colonna, an adored Renaissance poetess who surrounded herself with an elegant court up there. She later moved to Rome, where she became Michelangelo’s soul mate, and he wrote poems to her, addressing her as “thou spirit of grace.”
In the town of Forio is La Mortella, an award-winning, striking garden formed by the late/great Lady Susana Walton. She was born in Argentina, came to Ischia with her music composer husband in the early 1950s, entertained such illustrious visitors as Vivian Leigh and Maria Callas, and then turned a barren plot of land into a showpiece that’s visited by thousands every year. Anywhere you land, you’ll find places to luxuriate in hot bubbling pools and mud baths. My writer pal Maxine Albert (a woman of beautiful taste) insisted I head to Lacco Ameno and check into L’Albergo della Regina Isabella.
The sprawling Spanish-style resort was built by film producer Angelo Rizzoli in the 1950s over the ruins of ancient Greek and Roman baths. It immediately became a hot spot for celebrities like Ava Gardner, Gina Lollobrigida, and Anna Magnani. These days it still has a mid-century retro vibe and is one of the island’s most special places, hosting an international film and music festival every June with outdoor movies and concerts. The atmosphere is a comfortable combo of laid-back resort by day and old-world formality at night. In other words, you pad around in your robe to the downstairs seaside dining room for lavish breakfast and lunch buffets between ocean dips, spa treatments, and lounging on the dock with a good book.
If you’re feeling more active, you can stroll through the sweet town, or the hotel can arrange a boat rental. Evenings get fancier when ultra-attentive waiters fawn over you with French service, presenting refined dishes of fresh seafood. The Regina Isabella Spa and Medical Center is rated as one of the best in the world because the waters of this specific area are highly radioactive. Radioactive sounded scary to me at first, but apparently this is a good kind of radioactivity that makes the baths remarkably therapeutic.
Marine and volcanic mud is matured in pools for one year, and the staff of fifty top-drawer pros gives the huge facility a crisp clinical feel. You can get anything here, from cures for respiratory or arthritis ailments to Reiki to anti-aging treatments. After a mud facial, your skin will feel as soft as a baby’s. The hot stone massage was sublime. “You slept for an hour,” the signora whispered as I got up from the table in a most pleasant fog. I floated back to my room, stepped out on the terrace into that bubbling hot tub, and watched the sun slide into the sea, turning the sky pink.
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