Discover Tremiti

San Domino is one of the two inhabited islands of the archipelago. It is almost 3 km long and about 1 km wide, and it’s the biggest – which gives you the scale of how small they are. It is also the most touristic, the main reason being that it has the easiest access to the bays and beaches. Other islands like San Nicola are mostly one big sheer drop all around, whereas San Domino has gentler descents into the sea. It’s quite striking how the landscapes change according to which side of the island you’re seeing. The north tends to be rugged and jagged, with the bitter north wind (‘tramontana’ being the most frequent one) blowing and molding and ‘combing’ the pine trees horizontally into shrivelled up bushes adhering to the ground; the south tends to be less ‘burnt’ from the wind and the trees are allowed to ‘stand up’, and the vegetation to grow more luxuriant.

Compared with the other islands, San Domino is greener. It has a vast pinewood (though some of it was burned down in a big fire in July 2017 which kept us all in a state of alert for weeks) with beaten tracks you can follow for some lovely walks in the woods. The pinewoods offer different forms of entertainment across all four seasons. For you sporty ones there’s an open-air gym track with different workout tools. In the spring the woods are very green and dotted in yellow, white and pink with hundreds of wild flowers. Around March-time they fill with wild asparagus, and you’ll often find people making their way through the shrubland looking for them for risotti, pasta, omelettes etc.

There are also a few mulberry trees and it’s nice to stand beneath them and eat the fruits still warm from the sun. In the summer it’s nice to walk around in the early morning or late afternoon, when it’s not too hot and you can hear thousands of cicadas, enjoy the smells of the woods, and find stillness as you look out at the breathtaking landscapes. In the autumn you’ll find the odd abandoned fig tree with the loveliest fruits; and a little later it’s mushroom-gathering time! the autumn colours the woods with beautiful hues and the weather is just perfect for energising walks. The winter is rarely too cold to want to go out, and everything is green with wood sorrel, and wreaths of prickly sarsaparilla climbing up the pines.

Once upon a time the whole island was crops, farmland, and orchards (“l’orto del Paradiso” they used to call it – “the orchard of Paradise”). They even used to produce wine – they still do, but only for personal consumption and you cannot buy it, whereas before you could. The island essentially saw a big boom during Mussolini’s time, as the islands were used as a penal colony and the convicts provided labour for the landowners. San Domino was also used as a sort of ‘ghetto’ for homosexuals – ‘femmeniell’’ they were called, ‘femmina’ meaning ‘woman’, ‘female’, and ‘femmena’ being the Neapolitan dialect version of the word. As uncomfortable as this past may be, island economy saw a boost and several buildings were erected in that time.

The town centre of San Domino develops around the main square, Piazza Sandro Pertini, where you can find a couple of bars and shops. From there, there are three roads going up towards the ‘residential’ area of the island, and then the road going down to the port, bays, heliport etc.

In the summer the atmosphere is vibrant, with restaurants and bars and diving centres and rubber dinghy rentals and boat trips, and so forth. There is an open-air disco, but it’s not always frequented as the main reason people come to the island is to go to the sea, and tourists are mostly knackered by a day at the beach and want to get to bed early so they can make the most of the day-time, the sun and the sea. In fact by 11.30pm the streets turn mostly quiet, though bars close around 1 or 2am so if you’re a night-owl you can enjoy a late drink!

Most of the commercial and hospitality activities however shut for the winter, so that by October most people have left to take up their lives elsewhere. A big deterrent for living on the island is that there are no schools – the last children to be schooled on the island left several years ago, and now the old school is a playground. So, out of season the feel of San Domino is very different. There must be less than 100 people living here on this island during the winter. You’re probably thinking it must get pretty boring and dull. Wrong! there’s probably not one evening in which some dinner or aperitif or lunch or outing or karaoke isn’t organised by someone, somewhere. It’s often the case that you’ll find a long table out in the middle of the square with people just having an improvised lunch and some wine together in mid-December (yes, it can be that warm sometimes).

So really there are pros and cons about each season. High season is great if you’re not used to not having much variety of bars and restaurants, but the bays are busy and you may find the disco annoying if you’re a light sleeper. Low season on the other hand is perfect if you’re looking for peace and quiet and you like to have bays and beaches all to yourself, but you may tire of not having many options for places to dine.

When in doubt, plan a visit in July and in October, and savour both!

San Nicola, one of the two inhabited islands of the archipelago, is steeped in history. It was inhabited since the Iron Age. The Benedictine monks in 1045 founded the abbey of Santa Maria a Mare, which became an important monastery and place of worship.

After the Benedictines, the abbey was taken up by the Cistercians, and successively by the Laterans. The whole island is like an open-air museum, with its Medieval stone road leading up to the village centre. A drawbridge separates the town from the abbey complex with its towers, cloisters, sactuary, wells, and less-than-obvious passages leading to abandoned vaulted halls and cellars underground.

The façade of the church to this day bears the marks of the cannon-balls fired against San Nicola by the English during Napoleonic times, when Murat’s followers were hiding in the islands. The church, dedicated to Santa Maria a Mare, is exquisitely decorated on the outside with statues and stone garlands.

On the inside of the church there is the oldest mosaique in Apulian Romanic style, characterised by depictions of monsters and imaginary creatures. The gilded wooden polyptich, and black Madonna are also worth looking out for. To the left you’ll also find a wooden crucifix, and notice how by a clever optical illusion the eyes of Christ seem to follow you wherever you go! As was the fate for many Romanic churches, it was decorated during the Baroque era with religious paintings on wood which we can admire by looking up at the ceiling.

After you pass the cloisters, and things start looking like there might be nothing more to see, follow the path going down under an archway: the view suddenly opens up to La Tagliata, with stunning views of Capraia. You’ll then wind your way up the steps, and reach the other half of the island, which has sea on both sides of the sheer drops. Do not be intimidated by the signs telling you it’s a military zone: you are not trespassing.

If you keep to the left you’ll eventually find a necropolis carved in the rocks, and after a while…Diomedes’ tomb. It’s a semi-circular hole carved to create a deep entrance: according to legend, that is where Diomedes was buried.

Farther on you will get to the Libyan cemetery: hundreds of Libyans were deported to San Nicola in 1911 and left to die there, after Giolitti’s war against Turkey, and in memory of these prisoners in 2004 a mausoleum was erected. Farther still is the local cemetery, built on the cliff right at the very tip of San Nicola. When you see where the cemetery lies your mind will boggle thinking of the logistics of funerals and wakes on these islands.

In the town centre today there is the City Hall, a couple of bars, and a few B&Bs or houses for rental. There are no grocery stores on San Nicola. The only two places where you can access the sea from the land rather than by boat are down at the port, where you can find a beach of pebbles and sand, and right at the other end of the island, called Le Marinelle, where if descent is possible if hard, the climb back up requires significant strength.

Capraia in the second largest island of the archipelago of the Tremiti islands. It is uninhabited, with only a tumbling-down lighthouse and a hut. Up until a few decades ago there was still a family living in the lighthouse.

It is also known as Caprara or Capperaia – the first version indicates that the island used to have plenty of wild goats (capra is goat in Italian); the second version points at the island being rich with caper plants. From May and throughout the summer you can make kilos of capers!

There are some impressive natural rock formations on Capraia, such as the ‘Grottone’ (a big sea grotto) and the ‘Architiello’ (an archway over the sea).

Capraia offers some amazing diving spots, with specimens of gorgonie, grottos and shipwrecks to explore, sheer drops into the blue, and a great variety of sea life.

In between Capraia and San Nicola there is an underwater statue of Padre Pio, a figure many people in the area worship. It is one of the biggest underwater statues in the world: it’s 13 metres tall!

Cretaccio is essentially a big sandstone rock between San Domino, San Nicola, and Capraia. You can get water-taxied there for a different bathing experience.

Vegetation is scarce and reduced to low shrubs. There are no trees at all, so there is never much shadow, but it’s quite spectacular going there when the baby seagulls have recently hatched and they’re waddling clumsily on the rocks, and cheeping under the parents’ strict supervision.

The yellow clay that makes up the island creates beautiful hues of turquoise with the blue of the sea. The clay can also be used for mud-baths and it does wonders for skin and hair!

Pianosa marks the northernmost tip of Puglia and from the other islands on clear days it can appear as a white sliver on the horizon – at night sometimes you can see its lighthouse flashing. It is the third smallest island of the archipelago, and it lies about 10,80 nautical miles away from the northernmost tip of Capraia.

Access is prohibited because it is zone A of the marine reserve, so that it is not allowed to approach is any closer than 500 metres. It is also dangerous to go there because around it at the bottom of the sea there are still unexploded bombs, which were unloaded there during WWII. Fishing is strictly prohibited, and any diving or on-foot excursion required a qualified guide and a special permit.

Vegetation on Pianosa is very scarce, with nothing more than very resistant forms of bulbs and small cacti. Life conditions for both flora and fauna are near impossible on the island: being only 15 metres high at most, when the sea is rough the waves can cover the island almost completely. Lizards can be found, and birds frequent the island too.

The scarcity of terrestrial fauna however is contrasted by diverse, rich marine life.