Snav - Ships and Fast Ferries

discovering the bourbon prison

Lonely, isolated, placed on the island of Santo Stefano, lies the prison that Bourbons kings built in the second half of the eighteenth century. The inauguration was held in 1795, and saw the entrance of the first 200 prisoners in the prison facility. The work was a real novelty, since it was conceived and implemented based on the principles of the Enlightenment of that period. The idea behind it was: a place of detention that would act as a model of a "clean" society, that would be capable of rewarding the good and punishing the guilty.

Bourbon prison presents itself as a striking and surreal building, in total isolation and completely surrounded by waves of the sea: the visitors  wonder how it is possible to have built such a sad and melancholy building in such a beautiful and evocative place. In the course of the centuries some important figures in Italian history have found accommodation in its cells: from the those who inspired the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799 to Luigi Settembrini in the Bourbon age, to Sandro Pertini and Rocco Pugliese during the Fascist period. The structure is now in disuse, and is the subject of a project aimed at the recovery of the building to increase tourism.

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