L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 10 L'Italo-Americano T he most talked- about film of the summer has sent t h o u s a n d s o f travelers rushing t o a s m a l l S i c i l i a n i s l a n d m o s t o f t h e m h a d n e v e r heard of a year ago. For his s p r a w l i n g , m u c h - a r g u e d - over version of H o m e r ' s O d y s s e y , C h r i s t o p h e r Nolan chose Favignana, t h e l a r g e s t o f t h e E g a d i Islands off the western tip of Sicily, to stand in for Ithaca, the rocky kingdom Ulysses spends ten years trying to get home to. Matt Damon, as the wandering king, filmed t h e p a l a c e s c e n e s a t t h e Castello di Santa Caterina, the old fortress crowning the island's highest point, while t h e c a m e r a s r o a m e d i t s beaches and the impossibly clear water around it. Favig- nana is now bracing for an "Odyssey effect" that could bring it a quarter of a billion euros over three years, and its mayor is already dream- ing of a permanent Ulysses trail. There is a lovely irony in all this, because, of course, Ithaca is Greek and Favig- nana is not. Yet the choice is less incongruous than it first looks, because from antiqui- ty onward Greek and Roman w r i t e r s a n d g e o g r a p h e r s identified many of Ulysses' adventures with the coasts o f s o u t h e r n I t a l y a n d Sicily. Homer himself left much of the journey's geog- raphy indistinct, even fan- tastical, and it was later gen- erations who filled in the map, sometimes convincing- l y , s o m e t i m e s w i t h m o r e imagination than evidence. And the places they settled on are still there to visit. I t i s w o r t h b e g i n n i n g w h e r e U l y s s e s l i n g e r e d longest, about sixty miles s o u t h o f R o m e , w h e r e a great gray headland rears out of the flat Pontine coast, an island in all but name: M o n t e C i r c e o . H o m e r ' s Circe lived on an island he called Aeaea, without fixing it to any real place, and it was ancient tradition that came to set that island here, at the promontory which still carries her name, where she turned Ulysses' crew into p i g s a n d k e p t t h e h e r o a year, as guest and lover in the end, rather more than prisoner. Seen from the sea, t h e m o u n t a i n r e a l l y d o e s have the profile of a woman lying on her back: Circe, the locals will tell you, is still waiting there for her lost love. F r o m C i r c e ' s i s l a n d Ulysses sailed to the very edge of the world, and that too the ancients set on their own map: on the volcanic coast west of Naples lies the Lago d'Averno , a dark, still crater lake ringed by the sulfurous Campi Flegrei. Ancient writers derived its n a m e f r o m t h e G r e e k Aornos, "birdless," believing its fumes killed any bird that flew across. Later Greek and R o m a n t r a d i t i o n t i e d t h e r e g i o n o f A v e r n u s a n d Cumae to Homer's land of t h e C i m m e r i a n s , w h e r e Ulysses summoned the dead a n d q u e s t i o n e d t h e b l i n d prophet Tiresias, though in t h e p o e m t h e h e r o n e v e r enters Hades at all, but calls the dead up to him at the world's edge. Virgil would a f t e r w a r d s l e a d A e n e a s down into the Underworld through this same Cumaean landscape, which remains one of the eeriest places in all of Campania. Southward, off the Amalfi Coast near Positano, three l i t t l e i s l a n d s b r e a k t h e w a t e r : L i G a l l i , k n o w n s i n c e a n t i q u i t y a s L e Sirenuse, the sirens. Ancient tradition placed the Sirens' s o n g , t h e d e a d l y m u s i c Ulysses had himself lashed to the mast to hear and live, in these waters. The islands are private now – the dancer Rudolf Nureyev once owned Gallo Lungo, the largest of them – but seen from a boat they look exactly the part, low and golden and just far enough offshore to be dan- gerous. The real gauntlet, though, c a m e i n t h e n a r r o w s between the mainland and Sicily, which ancient geogra- p h e r s i d e n t i f i e d w i t h t h e p a s s a g e t h e p o e m s e t s b e t w e e n i t s t w o m o s t famous horrors: the Strait o f M e s s i n a , b a r e l y t w o m i l e s w i d e , g u a r d e d b y Scylla, the six-headed mon- s t e r o f t h e r o c k s , a n d Charybdis, the whirlpool t h a t t h r e e t i m e s a d a y s u c k e d t h e s e a d o w n a n d hurled it back. Both have kept their names, so that on the Calabrian side, the little town of Scilla still climbs its crag above the water, while on the Sicilian side, where the Tyrrhenian and Ionian currents crash together, the sea can still twist itself into the spinning Cariddi that sailors once dreaded. T h e n t h e r e i s S i c i l y itself. Homer's island of the Cyclopes is nameless, and Polyphemus' cave sits on no p a r t i c u l a r m o u n t a i n , y e t ancient and local tradition brought the giant here long ago: off Aci Trezza, near Catania, we find a cluster of black basalt stacks jutting from the sea, known as the F a r a g l i o n i d e i C i c l o p i , which local lore believes to be the boulders the blinded Polyphemus tore from Etna and hurled after Ulysses' fleeing ship. This is why the whole shore is still known t o d a y a s t h e R i v i e r a d e i Ciclopi. Sicily was identified from antiquity with Homer's Thrinacia as well, the island of the Sun, where the starv- ing crew made their fatal mistake and slaughtered the s a c r e d c a t t l e o f t h e g o d Helios, an association rein- forced by the island's later n a m e , T r i n a c r i a , a n d i t s f a m o u s t h r e e - c o r n e r e d shape. Even the winds were Ital- ian by tradition: ancient writers placed Aeolus, keep- er of the winds, somewhere among the volcanic islands n o r t h o f S i c i l y t h a t n o w carry his name, the Aeo- lians, where the god gave Ulysses a leather bag hold- ing every gale but the one he needed, and his men, cer- tain it was treasure, opened it within sight of home and blew themselves all the way back. Nolan shot on those islands too, at Lipari and V u l c a n o , so the modern production and the ancient story have, perhaps without q u i t e m e a n i n g t o , c o m e ashore in the same place. T h e " O d y s s e y e f f e c t " washing over Favignana this summer, then, is only the newest chapter of a very old s t o r y . F a v i g n a n a ' s o w n ancient name, Aegusa, is generally linked to goats, and Homer, intriguingly, d e s c r i b e s a n u n n a m e d island thick with wild goats lying just opposite the land of the Cyclopes. That resem- blance has encouraged mod- ern attempts to draw Favig- n a n a o n t o t h e O d y s s e a n m a p , t h o u g h t h e l i n k i s speculative rather than an established ancient tradi- tion. Nolan cast the island as Ithaca, but its landscape looks well able to play more than one part in the story. Ulysses' route may never be fixed for certain on any modern map, but for more than two thousand years, Italians have looked at their o w n c o a s t l i n e , w i t h t h e w h i r l p o o l , t h e s m o k i n g crater, the woman-shaped mountain, the giant's scat- tered rocks, and recognized the hero's journey in it. Chasing Ulysses: the Italian coast that claimed the Odyssey CHIARA D'ALESSIO ALL AROUND ITALY TRAVEL TIPS DESTINATIONS ACTIVITIES Fishing boats float in the clear waters off Favignana, the Sicilian island chosen to stand in for Ithaca in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (Photo: Maniapixel/Dreamstime.com)

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