The Origins of Thermal Cures in Casamicciola

A town born of hot water

Casamicciola's coat of arms shows a small stream of mineral water in which a woman is bathing her feet. She is the matron Nisola, a figure from a legend that derives the town's name from Casa Nisola (Nisola's house): sick and abandoned here, she is said to have recovered her health thanks to its waters. It is only one of the theories about the origin of the name, but it captures the identity of a town that has always lived by its springs.

Why the water is hot in Casamicciola

Ischia is a volcanic island, made up of numerous volcanic edifices; the last eruption dates from 1302. The volcano is now quiescent, but the heat underground drives intense hydrothermal activity, with emissions of hot water and gas, and fumaroles that come close to 100 °C on Monte Cito. On the northern side of the island this heat has given rise to Casamicciola's hydrothermal basins: the Gurgitello basin, the Cotto and Sinigallia basin, the La Rita basin and the Castiglione basin. To find out more about the geological origin of the waters, see The Heat of the Earth.

From antiquity to the Middle Ages

Scholars agree that thermal bathing was practised on Ischia from the arrival of the Greek settlers onwards. In Casamicciola the first reliable records of therapeutic use concern the Gurgitello spring, already in use in the Middle Ages: springs, baths and sweat rooms were frequented by the sick, often in simple, modest structures.

The 16th century and Giulio Iasolino

The turning point came in the 16th century, when a wide range of medical treatises began to describe the waters of Campania. The decisive contribution came from Giulio Iasolino, a Calabrian physician working in Naples, who from 1573 spent more than thirty years studying the island's springs, baths, sweat rooms and muds. His research was gathered in the treatise De' rimedi naturali che sono nell'isola di Pithecusa, hoggi detta Ischia (On the natural remedies of the island of Pithecusa, now called Ischia), published in Naples in 1588 together with Mario Cartaro's celebrated map of the island.

Iasolino paid special attention to the Gurgitello, which he recommended in particular for infertile women and those with stomach complaints. Before 1582 the noblewoman Geronima Colonna, together with the d'Avalos family and other Neapolitan nobles who had recovered their health here, promoted the restoration of the baths, funded and supervised by the Bishop of Ischia, Fabio Polverino: the result was a vaulted room with a few masonry tubs.

From springs to organised care

The Gurgitello's fame persuaded the governors of the newly founded Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples to build baths and a hospice for the sick poor right here from 1604, choosing the site partly on Iasolino's advice: this is the beginning of the story told in The Pio Monte and Thermal Care for the Poor. By the 18th century the Pio Monte baths included, besides the Gurgitello, the waters of the Denti and the Capone. In the 19th century the study of the waters continued with physicians such as the Swiss Jacques Étienne Chevalley de Rivaz, who settled in Casamicciola from 1830.

The springs today

Many of the historic springs, from the Gurgitello to the Occhio spring, are still used by the town's spa establishments. Their story continues on the page devoted to the history of the Gurgitello.