Forio has always attracted a different crowd from the rest of Ischia — artists, writers, and intellectuals who came for the landscape and stayed for the light. In the 1950s and 60s, W.H. Auden, Pablo Neruda, Alberto Moravia, Luchino Visconti, and Pier Paolo Pasolini all spent significant time here. The legacy is a town with genuine cultural texture: the Giardini La Mortella, one of the finest gardens in southern Italy, was created here by Lady Susana Walton in memory of her husband, the British composer William Walton. Concerts are still held in the garden every summer, drawing serious music lovers to what might otherwise seem like a beach resort.
The thermal landscape around Forio is some of the most dramatic on the island. The volcanic origins of Ischia are nowhere more visible than at Sorgeto Bay, where hot springs bubble through cracks in the seafloor at the water's edge — free, accessible year-round, and at their most atmospheric after dark. Above the town, Mount Epomeo, the extinct volcano at the heart of the island, offers a hike rewarded with views over the whole Tyrrhenian coast. The church of Santa Maria del Soccorso, on its rocky headland above the sea, is the place the whole island congregates at sunset. There is nowhere better to watch the sun go down over the Tyrrhenian.