Elsa Morante and L’isola di Arturo: what is left on Procida

What is documented

Three things, and they are few but solid.

• The novel is set on Procida. It is not a generic island in the gulf nor an invented island with another name: it is this one, with this name.
• The spiaggia dell’Asino appears in the book. It is the only precise place on the island that our sources link directly to the text, and it is also the only one we point out as such.
• A literary prize was born from the novel, the Premio Procida — Isola di Arturo — Elsa Morante, founded in February 1986, a few months after the writer’s death. It still exists, and it is the liveliest part of the legacy.

All the rest — which building is supposed to be the protagonist’s house, which corner of the village is supposed to correspond to which page — circulates on the island and in the guides, but it is not documented by any of the sources we have used. We treat it for what it is: oral tradition, which has its own value and is not proof.

The spiaggia dell’Asino, the one address

It is at the eastern end of the Marina Grande front, right against the Lingua beach: from the Lingua you cross to it on foot. You reach the Lingua from the continuation of Via Roma or by a stairway that comes down from Via Bartolomeo Pagano, a few minutes from the ferry quay.

Let it be said without rhetoric: it is not a good day at the sea. The Lingua is tiny, with no facilities and no shade, of pebbles or of very coarse sand depending on who is describing it, with the bottom dropping away at once and a working harbour alongside. You go for another reason: it looks towards the mainland and Monte di Procida, and in the last hour of light the water and the coast opposite turn pink. If you are making a literary circuit of the island, this is the moment to do it, and half an hour is enough.

One caution about using this place. Anyone expecting somewhere laid on — a sign, a quotation carved in stone, a marked route — will not find it. The same rule applies here as at the Pozzo Vecchio: on the spot there is nothing built for the visitor, and whoever has the text in their head sees one thing, whoever does not sees a small beach next to a harbour.

The prize born from the book, in 1986

It is the most concrete part of this story, and the part the guides tell least. The Premio Procida — Isola di Arturo — Elsa Morante was founded in February 1986, a few months after the writer’s death, in explicit homage to the novel set on the island. Among its originators the sources name Gabriella Sica, Walter Pedullà and Paolo Volponi.

It is organised by the Comune di Procida — Assessorato alla Cultura, under the high patronage of the Presidency of the Republic. It is not, then, a private or commercial initiative: it is a municipal prize that an island of a little over ten thousand inhabitants has kept going for forty years, which is a remarkable fact in itself.

The detail that interests us most concerns the jury. Since the twenty-ninth edition, in 2016, a jury of readers selected by the bookshops and the schools of the island has worked alongside the technical jury. It means that the people deciding include the Procidans who read, and not only the critics who come in from outside. The last winner we can name with certainty is Fabio Stassi, in 2025, with Bebelplatz.

What we are not writing: the date of the 2026 edition. We have not verified it and there is no sense in publishing an approximate day for an event somebody might want to organise a trip around. If you are interested in attending, the information should be asked of the Comune.

What we are not telling you, and why

A fair amount of second-hand material circulates about Morante and Procida, and the boundary between the documented and the plausible is a thin one. Here is where we stop.

• No plot, no characters. We are not summarising the novel or quoting scenes from it: if we did it from memory we would get something wrong, and a plot error in a travel guide is the kind of detail that then bounces around everywhere.
• No biography. How much time Elsa Morante spent on the island, where she stayed, when she came: we have no sources that establish it and we are not inventing it.
• No identification of buildings. The palazzo that is supposed to be the protagonist’s house is one of the most repeated attributions on the island. It does not appear in any source we have verified.

It is a list of absences, but we prefer this to a page full of evocative details that do not stand up to a check. The novel exists, the setting is this, the rest is supplied by the reader.

The island that reads, today

What is interesting is that the literary life of Procida did not stop at the prize. Every year from June there is Procida Racconta, a festival organised by the publishing house Nutrimenti, which has run a bookshop on the island since 2014, with Chiara Gamberale as artistic director. The formula is declared to be unique in Italy: six authors spend a few days here, each one “adopts” an inhabitant of Procida, collects their story and turns it into an unpublished short story, read publicly on the final evening in the presence of the real protagonist. The stories go into a volume published every year. Past guests have included Concita De Gregorio, Donatella Di Pietrantonio, Fabio Genovesi, Paolo Nori, Michele Bravi, Gavin Francis and Emanuele Trevi. It takes place in Piazza Marina Grande and on the Molo di Sopraflutto, entry is free and places are limited.

The festival was born inside the programme of Procida Italian Capital of Culture 2022, the year in which the island — the first Italian island to receive the title, designated on 18 January 2021 — put together 150 events over 330 days with 350 artists from 45 countries, under the slogan “Procida, la cultura non isola” [Procida, culture does not isolate]. The most solid legacy of that year is the restoration of Palazzo d’Avalos, the former prison of Terra Murata reopened in June 2025 with the permanent installation “Non ho aspettato altro che il giorno pieno” [I have waited for nothing but the full day].

It is worth bearing in mind precisely after talking about a novel: the image of the island as a still, suspended place, which literature helped to build, lives alongside a place of a little over ten thousand inhabitants that organises festivals, restores buildings and argues publicly about its own health services. The two things do not exclude each other, but if you come looking only for the first you miss half the island.

Half an afternoon, if you want to make a circuit of it

It is not an official itinerary and we are not passing it off as one. It is the most sensible way of putting in a row the few places that really have something to do with it, in two or three hours, starting from the harbour.

1. Marina Grande, the harbour front with the church of Santa Maria della Pietà: the first building you see arriving by sea, and it is from here that the island has always told its story to those who arrive.
2. The Lingua and the spiaggia dell’Asino, a few minutes on foot to the east, better in the last hour of light.
3. Terra Murata and Palazzo d’Avalos, if you have the time and the legs: the former prison marked 140 years of the island’s life, so much so that almost every Procidan family keeps an object made inside it. The visiting hours are not verified — three sources give three different calendars — and the visit is guided only, by booking: check before you go up.
4. The bookshop, if you are here in June, and the final evening of Procida Racconta.

If the places you are after are the ones from the cinema, they are another matter and they are on the page about the Il Postino places.