Anywhere Italy

Islands

Italy's island towns

Italian towns reachable only by ferry: the islands. 18 towns shown, drawn from our ferry-only routing list (Pontine, Tremiti, Ischia, Capri, Aeolian, Egadi, Pelagie, Tuscan archipelago, and the Sardinian small islands).

A ferry ticket is a filter. It removes the day-trip crowd, the coach tours, and everyone whose itinerary cannot absorb a missed sailing. What remains on the far side of the crossing are these comuni, from the Tremiti to the Pelagie.

Island time is real and administratively enforced: shops close when the last boat leaves, restaurants cook what the morning boat brought. Book the return leg loosely and let the schedule win.

  1. 1.Anacapri6,835 residentsNapoli · CampaniaThe upper half of Capri, 150 meters above its famous twin, where Axel Munthe built Villa San Michele on a Tiberian ruin.
  2. 2.Calasetta2,775 residentsSud Sardegna · SardiniaThe Ligurian town founded by Tabarka exiles in 1770 on the northwest tip of Sant'Antioco, where Tabarchino is still spoken in the streets.
  3. 3.Capraia Isola370 residentsLivorno · TuscanyA volcanic island of 370 residents and one village, the third largest of the Tuscan Archipelago, a penal colony from 1873 to 1986 and a national park since.
  4. 4.Capri6,804 residentsNapoli · CampaniaThe 142-meter Tyrrhenian island town where Tiberius governed Rome for a decade from twelve villas above limestone cliffs.
  5. 5.Carloforte5,925 residentsSud Sardegna · SardiniaA Ligurian-speaking fishing town on the Isola di San Pietro, founded in 1738 by coral fishers returning from Tunisian Tabarka.

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  1. 6.Casamicciola Terme7,614 residentsNapoli · CampaniaIschia's thermal town on the flank of Monte Epomeo, levelled by the 1883 earthquake and again in 2017, rebuilt on the Gurgitello springs.
  2. 7.Favignana4,525 residentsTrapani · SicilyThe largest of the Egadi Islands off western Sicily, anchored by the Florio family's late-19th-century industrial tonnara that ran one of the Mediterranean's most famous tuna fisheries, with calcarenite cliffs above turquoise sea (Cala Rossa, Cala Azzurra, Bue Marino) instead of beaches.
  3. 8.Forio17,437 residentsNapoli · CampaniaThe largest Ischia commune by area, a Tyrrhenian coastal town with the white Soccorso church on a sea promontory and the Walton gardens above.
  4. 9.Isola del Giglio1,330 residentsGrosseto · TuscanyA granite island in the Tyrrhenian Archipelago, walled village on the ridge, port below, where the Costa Concordia ran aground in January 2012.
  5. 10.Isole Tremiti479 residentsFoggia · ApuliaAn Adriatic archipelago of five islands twenty-two kilometers off the Gargano, the only Italian commune scattered across an open-sea group.
  6. 11.La Maddalena10,592 residentsSassari · SardiniaThe only inhabited town of a sixty-island granite archipelago between Sardinia and Corsica, and the place Giuseppe Garibaldi chose to die.
  7. 12.Lampedusa e Linosa6,505 residentsAgrigento · SicilyItaly's southernmost comune, three islands on the African continental shelf, closer to Tunisia than to Sicily.
  8. 13.Lipari12,565 residentsMessina · SicilyThe largest Aeolian island and the only municipality that administers six of the seven, with a clifftop castle citadel rising above two harbors.
  9. 14.Pantelleria7,352 residentsTrapani · SicilyA volcanic island closer to Tunisia than Sicily, where dry-stone dammusi sit among bush-trained Zibibbo vines listed by UNESCO.
  10. 15.Ponza3,289 residentsLatina · LazioThe main island of the Pontine archipelago — a volcanic crescent 40 km off Formia with the white tuff cliffs of Chiaia di Luna, the Roman fishpond tunnels at Pilato, Cala Feola's natural pools, and a 3,200-resident borgo curving around a horseshoe harbour painted in 18th-century Bourbon-pastel.
  11. 16.Procida10,092 residentsNapoli · CampaniaA four-square-kilometer Flegrean island of pastel fishing houses, the 2022 Italian Capital of Culture, with the fortified village of Terra Murata at 91 meters.
  12. 17.Ustica1,311 residentsPalermo · SicilyA volcanic island fifty-two kilometers north of Palermo with Italy's first marine protected area, lentil fields on lava, and a long memory as a prison.
  13. 18.Ventotene704 residentsLatina · LazioThe smaller of the inhabited Pontine Islands, a flat three-kilometer tuff platform where Altiero Spinelli drafted the federalist Manifesto in 1941.

We write about towns like these every Sunday, one town a week, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, from Pietrasanta.

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