MISE EN SCÈNE

The Italian isle of Panarea has drawn many a film production for its peerless horizons, elemental nature, and tightknit, matriarchal community. By Stephanie Rafanelli Photographs by Marta Tucci

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I travelled the globe looking for a home. Then I came to Panarea and found one — with the whole world within it.” This scrawl, attributed to one “Mastro Ciccio, 1920”, is chalked in dialect on the entrance to his Aeolian island home. It is a beautiful door, faded but still singing to me as I pass by barefoot. And it’s the same cyan as the waves that skirt this tiny car-free island in the Tyrrhenian, moving like a boundless sea of torn silk. Even residents are transfixed by the stretch of water that lies between Panarea—a 3.4-square-kilometre chunk of volcanic rock — and Stromboli, the island 13.5 nautical miles to the northeast with an active volcano that has erupted almost continuously since 350 BC. When talking, the Panarioti always keep one eye out there. Right now, in the deceptive gold of dawn, Stromboli is as peaceful as a pyramid on the horizon, its red-hot summit just some trick of the light.

Stromboli is nicknamed “Iddu”, dialect for “Him”, as a sign of respect for its mysticism and power. Iddu is a shapeshifter encircled by eight shadowy islets. The eastern side of Panarea is the world’s best viewing deck to observe “his” histrionics, in an amphitheatre of isolotti whose appearance transforms depending on the sun’s position. Panarea is the smallest and oldest of the seven inhabited Aeolian Islands scattered like dice up to 90km from Sicily’s northeastern coast, the result of fiery submarine volcanoes. Above water, they open into jagged obsidian fields and sulphur mines. Their Malvasia grapes and salted capers are infused with gun-smoke minerality, as if they lie on a brink between heaven and hell, scented by honeysuckle and an aroma like burnt matches.