The small town of Ustica extends like an amphitheater around a bay that houses the port, Santa Maria cove, where ferries and hydrofoils dock. A road and stairways bordered by Hibiscus lead to the town center, dominated on the left by the Bourbon Tower of Santa Maria, in the shape of a truncated pyramid, and on the right by the remains of the Falconiera fortress. The heart of Ustica is the nerve center of the island with restaurants, bars, groceries and all the services you need for your holiday, and where a marble plaque on the facade of a pink house with green shutters reminds you that here, between the end of 1926 and the beginning of 1927, Antonio Gramsci, the most illustrious political exile of Ustica, lodged. The square is closed behind by a small fenced stage beyond which stands the eighteenth-century San Ferdinando Church, with a facade enlivened by niches and ceramic sculptures by De Simone and, inside, numerous tombstones of illustrious islanders.
