Giardini Poseidon Terme

Giardini Poseidon Terme occupies six hectares of terraced hillside above the bay of Citara, at Forio on the west coast of Ischia, with a private stretch of sandy beach at the bottom of the slope. The park was founded in 1959 by a German doctor, Gernot Walde, who was the first to build a garden of linked thermal pools on the island when the bay was still farmland; the Bavarian industrialist Ludwig Kuttner redesigned it with the architect Fritz Zollinger in the 1970s, and the Staudinger family has run it since 1984. It is a day facility rather than a hotel, and it opens for a season that runs from mid-April to the end of October.

The water is heated by the volcanic system under Ischia and, according to the operator, surfaces across the site at anything from 25 °C to 85 °C. It carries salts, bromine, iodine, alkalis and sulphates, with traces of calcium, magnesium and lithium, and the park makes a point of its radon content. The pools are drained completely every evening half an hour before closing, cleaned, and refilled overnight with spring water carrying no chemical additives, with fresh water running in continuously through the bathing day.

What distinguishes the place is how precisely the bathing is set out. Each basin is named and posted with its temperature and a maximum session length: Adriano at 28 °C for the free 10 a.m. aqua-aerobics class and twenty-minute soaks, Aphrodite at 32 °C with adjustable massage jets, Ischia at 34 °C with a hoist for reduced mobility, Arethusa at 36 °C and Ariadne at 38 °C both looking out to sea, the last capped at eight minutes. Five Kneipp stations alternate 40 °C and 15 °C basins in three-minute and thirty-second bursts, one of them a Japanese treading pool floored with river pebbles, and a steam grotto hollowed out of natural pumice runs at 45 °C with a cold plunge after each five-minute pass. Alongside these are non-thermal seawater pools: a 33-metre swimming basin at 28 °C and two shallow heated children's pools, since under-twelves are kept out of the thermal water.

The rest of the park is gardens, tended without chemical pesticides, threaded with barrier-free paths and served by hoists, an electric buggy and staff assistance. There are three eating places, including a wine grotto carved into the volcanic tuff, private VIP terraces let by the day, a boutique, and a 500-square-metre health and wellness centre offering medical, holistic and cosmetic treatments with an initial medical check-up.