The seafarers of Procida once ceded the island to their wives when they went out to sea. The culture that has emerged in this way makes the mini island in the Mediterranean a tourist attraction
I am a seafarer’s daughter and that has shaped my life, ”says Chiara Pisani, nibbling on a lemon wedge. She sits in one of the typical island gardens that hide their splendor behind high walls. The famous Procida lemons grow between pink bougainvillea and fragrant roses, one of which can weigh a kilo. From the garden you can go straight down to the sea and jump from flat rocks into the turquoise water.
Chiara tried to escape the tiny island in the Gulf of Naples and also the fate of the eternally waiting seafarer woman. She studied and worked in Naples. Eventually she came back and ran a jazz music school and room rental on Procida. In the end, she also married a seafarer who, however, has not been going there for a long time. Today Chiara is almost 60 and she no longer thinks about leaving. “This island won’t let you go,” she explains. And now she is proud that, with Procida, an island has been named the Italian Capital of Culture for 2022 for the first time. The decisive factor for this was the special location and the special history of the small world in the middle of the sea.
The small island of Procida was named the Italian Capital of Culture in 2022
Like the life of the islanders, the history of Procida is also shaped by seafaring. Since the times of the Phoenicians, men have been out to sea for months or even years. The women were responsible for everything from raising children to finances. It was often a lonely life, but they made their own everyday life and the men brought home good money.
Chiara’s mother still remembers that the women from the poorer neighboring island of Ischia came to Procida with filled baskets on their heads to sell fruit and vegetables. The wives of shipbuilders and seafarers didn’t have to do that. Her traditional robe is lavishly decorated with gold embroidery and resembles a princess dress rather than folk costume.
The prosperity and the seafaring tradition have persisted to this day. Procida has never been a typical fishing island, even if many families used to make a living from fishing and a few still do this today. The fishing port of Coricella with its typical pastel-colored houses is nevertheless the best-selling postcard on the volcanic island, which – in contrast to its famous neighbors Capri and Ischia – is less known to foreign travelers.
In the summer season, however, it is bursting at the seams, because then traditionally the Neapolitan holiday guests flock from the ferry to the island and occupy their traditional holiday apartments. Like many other things, the room rental business has been a woman’s business – ever since writers and directors discovered the mini-island for themselves in the 1950s and 60s. At that time Elsa Morante dedicated her novel “Arturos Insel” to Procida.
The other Italian island: Procida is especially popular with local travelers
To this day, however, the number of holiday apartments and hotel rooms is rather manageable, because 90 percent of the residential buildings are used by the 10,000 islanders themselves. These are spread over an area of only 3.7 square kilometers and thus Procida holds the record of being the most densely populated island in Europe.
You get to feel that when you walk through the streets without sidewalks and are pushed against the house walls by cars, scooters and electric bikes – which even eleven-year-olds race around on. This is why it is forbidden for travelers to bring their own vehicles. The island is densely built up and from the Marina Grande jetty to the medieval fortress Terra Murata to the tourist port of Chiaiolella is a single place that can be crossed on foot. However, many signs also point to paths that lead out of the built-up landscape to idyllic beaches and lonely lighthouses.
Mayor Raimondo Ambrosino is not embarrassed when asked where the visitors to the future cultural capital are to be accommodated. “We don’t isolate ourselves, but instead include the mainland and other islands in the initiatives, laboratories and events,” he explains. He and his team summed up this attitude with the catchy slogan “La cultura non isola”, thus defeating the cultural city competition. The play on words can be translated into German as “culture is not an island” as well as with “culture does not isolate”.
As the cultural capital, Procida also wants to expand the program to the Italian mainland
In practical terms, it means that events are also planned on the mainland, which is only 3.4 kilometers away and can be quickly reached by ferry, and that some of the visitors will also be accommodated there. As early as the 18th century, when the Navy of Procida belonged to the royal fleet of the Bourbons, the population moved to the mainland, as the 16,000 inhabitants at that time could no longer find a place on the island. They founded the coastal town of Monte di Procida, which was part of the island’s territory until 1907. From a geological point of view, Procida is also part of the Phlegraean Fields, which are also formed from volcanic tuff. This unique natural and ancient landscape near Naples was already on Goethe’s travel program and the Grand Tour of his time.
“Procida has never been a lonely island and it shouldn’t be today,” says the mayor, who was elected with a left-wing democratic list of citizens. And he explains that the detailed program for 2022, which currently includes 44 cultural projects, will be presented in September. In addition to culture, it is also intended to promote social inclusion. This is symbolized by the medieval walls of the former Palazzo D’Avalos prison, where a cultural center is to be set up.
The program, which is financed with one million euros from the European Union and another three million euros from the Campania region, has set itself the goal of promoting culture as well as “social satisfaction”. One of the first initiatives already started is an open and self-governing center for women with mental health problems. These were previously housed on the mainland and have now returned to Procida.
The refugees who live on the island also take part in the initiatives. They present the instruments from their home countries in a music laboratory. Since 2017, Procida has been taking in immigrants who are spread across the island and are housed in private apartments.
The island of the seafaring women: Today Procida is producing a young generation of seafaring women
The state-funded program lasts a year and a half, after which they have to take care of themselves. Some of them work in hotels, restaurants or beach bars during the high season. These are jobs that young locals take on in other southern Italian vacation spots. Not so the offspring on Procida. “The young people earn more when they are hired by the navy or on cruise ships,” explains the mayor.
They receive the training for this at the Istituto Nautico, the institute for shipping, which was founded in 1833 and is one of the oldest in Italy. The degree is equivalent to the Abitur and not only the boys, but also many girls go to nautical school. Chiara Pisani also graduated from high school here forty years ago, but like most women of her generation, she took a different path. They no longer wanted to be seafarers’ wives, but neither did they want to become seawomen. It’s different today.
There are more and more young Procidaner women who are opting for a shipping career, which means a secure economic future.
Like 20-year-old Carmen Trapanese, who works on a giant cruise ship as an assistant for the so-called shop manager. Her goal is to become boss herself, i.e. the officer responsible for the entire guest area. In order to achieve that, she still has to hire a lot. Every trip away from home takes between three and four months. But she doesn’t mind that much. “This is our world on the island, we are always in the middle of the sea,” she says.
Destination Procida: The Italian mini-island will be the cultural capital of 2022
Almost everyone in her family goes to sea. Her father was a boatman and Carmen, the only woman in the family, follows in his footsteps. And she believes that this was exactly the right decision: “I enjoy getting to know new places and I enjoy being independent and spending my own money.”
Spending your own money was not yet an issue for Carmen’s grandmothers and the other seafarers’ wives. They have often earned it themselves. They not only rented rooms to summer visitors, but were also there when Procida made money on the petrodollars boom – after the long shipping crisis that lasted until the 1950s after the switch from sailing to steamers. The author Elisabetta Montaldo tells in her book “Procida” that at that time many young, unemployed islanders were hired on the oil tankers. A group of women, mostly mothers of experienced seafarers, took on the task of mediating with the shipping companies. Many sons came back traumatized after years of hard ship work. The money earned was invested in houses and the island was systematically built over.
This historical episode also shaped Chiara’s life. Her husband is one of those who came back from one of the oil tankers and has never wanted to go back to sea since. But he doesn’t want to talk about that like many men. “The stories of the island are mostly told by women,” says Chiara Pisani and she hopes that these stories will also be told in the year of the cultural capital.
