Source: Quillette
by Joan Smith
“Around 750 people live permanently on Ventotene, catering to the tourists who stay in spa hotels or hire diving equipment to explore the azure waters that surround it. Picturesque houses in pastel colours straggle up the hillside, but it’s an unsettling location for anyone who knows that Ventotene functioned as a prison — and a place of execution—for some of the most famous women in Roman history. In the late first century BC, the Roman emperor Augustus built a palace on the northern tip of the island, which was then called Pandateria, but there’s no evidence that he ever visited it. … Its most famous resident was Augustus’s daughter Julia, who was imprisoned in the palace for five years after she was disgraced and exiled in 2 BC. Julia was eventually moved to the mainland, but three more women from Rome’s Julio-Claudian imperial dynasty would be imprisoned here — and, unlike Julia, they would all die here.” (12/12/24)
https://quillette.com/2024/12/12/shameless-beyond-the-curse-of-shamelessness/