It opened its eye almost a hundred and fifty years ago, when Southern Italy was freshly entrusted to Savoy, just before the Bersaglieri added Rome to the Kingdom. Before there were only towers, required by the viceroy of Naples to watch the sea.
And that is where the gaze of the lighthouse has always been: on the waves of the Mediterranean, always the same and yet different at any time, between the gulf of Pozzuoli and the canal of Procida. Even today it indicates the promontory of Capo Miseno to sailors, so that the anxiety of reaching Capri and Ischia, or the sadness of having just left does not take them onto the rocks.
Geologists say the tip of the promontory was part of a crater. But more than the thought of the restlessness and volcanic rage of thirty thousand years ago, today hidden but not completely subdued underground, it is the eternal and reassuring movement of the Mare Nostrum that constitutes the fulcrum of the trip.
The legend tells that Miseno was a trumpeter of Aeneas: the promontory was a mound of earth under which the Trojan hero had buried the unfortunate companion, who died after daring to challenge Triton in playing the trumpet. But it is not a deafening duel that awaits travellers: it is only the whistle of the wind that clears the sky and provides a jaw-dropping view, a deserving reward for those who climb the path that leads to the top.