Chiaia di Luna site features

Chiaia di Luna is a single long curve: several hundred metres of pale tufa cliff standing almost vertically over a narrow strip of sand, with the sea closing the open side. Punta del Fieno holds the southern end and Punta di Capo Bianco the northern. From the water the bay reads as one clean crescent, which is what the name records.

The cliff is the feature, not a backdrop to one. It is a cross-section through the material Ponza is made of -- the kaolin and tuff of a drowned caldera rim -- and parts of its face now carry steel cable netting, strung there by the national park service after rockfalls killed people on the sand below.

Behind the beach, invisible from the sea, runs the Roman gallery: a tunnel of the Augustan age driven entirely through the tufa to link this bay with the port of Ponza on the other side of the island. It is the oldest built thing here and the reason the beach was ever walkable to. It is shut, its Roman brickwork failing.

Two caves belong to the same stretch of coast. The Grotta della Maga Circe lies on the west side between Capo Bianco and the beach, and tradition identifies it as the cave of Circe, who is said to have wintered here and spent her summers on Monte Circeo across the water on the mainland -- Ponza being a candidate for Homer's Aeaea. Further along, beneath the Belvedere headland with its botanical garden and castle remains, is the Grotta di Ulisse o del Sangue. Both are reached by boat.

• The crescent -- the largest inlet on Ponza, a narrow sand strip under a continuous high tufa cliff, curved like a half moon.
• The Roman gallery -- an Augustan-age tunnel cut entirely through the tufa from the port to the beach, now closed because its brickwork is collapsing.
• Punta del Fieno and Punta di Capo Bianco -- the headlands closing the bay south and north; Capo Bianco is an Italian national natural monument.
• The cable netting -- steel netting installed on the cliff face by the national park service to stop the rockfalls that closed the beach.
• Grotta della Maga Circe -- the sea cave between Capo Bianco and the beach that tradition makes the sorceress Circe's winter dwelling.
• Grotta di Ulisse o del Sangue -- a second cave further along the west coast, under the Belvedere headland.
• The tufa section -- a vertical cut through the kaolin and tuff of an extinct volcano's caldera rim.
• The view from the water -- the only way the whole bay can now be seen, and the way its shape reads best.