Gaiola Island is one of the minor islands of Naples, Italy; it is offshore of Posillipo and gives its name to the Underwater Park of Gaiola (Parco Sommerso di Gaiola), a protected marine area.
The island takes its name from the cavities that dot the coast of Posillipo (from the Latin cavea,
"little cave", and then through the dialect "Caviola"). Originally, the
small island was known as Euplea, protector of safe navigation, and was
the site of a small temple.
The island is very close to the coast, reachable with a few strokes of
swimming. It is assumed that originally it was nothing more than an
extension of the promontory opposite and was artificially separated only
at a later time at the behest of Lucullus.
In the 17th century the island was virtually littered with Roman
factories, while, two centuries later, the island served as a battery in
defense of the Gulf of Naples.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the island was inhabited by a hermit,
nicknamed "The Wizard", who lived thanks to the almsgiving of
fishermen. Soon after, the island saw the construction of the villa that
occupies it today and which was at one time owned by Norman Douglas, author of Land of the Siren. In the 1920s there was a cable car that connected the island to the mainland.
Naples's population has considered Gaiola a "cursed island", which with
its beauty hides a "restless fate". The reputation came about because of
the frequent premature death of its owners. For example, in the 1920s,
it belonged to the Swiss Hans Braun, who was found dead and wrapped in a
rug; a little later, his wife drowned in the sea. The next owner was
the German Otto Grunback, who died of a heart attack while staying in
the villa. A similar fate befell the pharmaceutical industrialist Maurice-Yves Sandoz, who committed suicide in a mental hospital in Switzerland;
its subsequent owner, a German steel industrialist, Baron Karl Paul
Langheim, was dragged to economic ruin by wild living. The island has
also belonged to Gianni Agnelli, who suffered the deaths of many relatives, and to Paul Getty, who endured the kidnapping of a grandson. The last private owner of the island was Gianpasquale Grappone, who was jailed.
Newspapers talked again about the "Gaiola Malediction" in 2009, after
the murder of Franco Ambrosio and his wife Giovanna Sacco, who owned a
villa opposite the island.
Origin Wikipedia...
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