Untold Italy · Friday, August 28, 2026
Professor Monique Skidmore suggests that Cape Circe on Italy's west coast, near Rome, may be the real-world location of the sorceress Circe's island from Homer's 'The Odyssey.' Archaeological evidence of a cave capable of holding ship cargo supports this theory, and the area remains largely undiscovered by tourists.
“So this interesting woman lived on the island of Circe. Now, if you were back in the Turidian Sea and you were a sailor in one of those really little flat boats that the Odyssey were in, and you saw five hundred and forty one meter rock rising from the sea, you'd go, hey, that's an island, let's go over there. And in fact, it wasn't an island. It was Cape Circe, which is on the west coast of the Italian mainland, about one hundred kilometers from Rome.”
“So Cape Circe looks like a pretty good spot to maybe think that this was Circe's island.”
“This area actually is just a very beautiful area, and you know, it's very untold for our listeners because even though it's between Rome and Naples, most people kind of just dart down to Naples maybe by train from Rome and completely missed that whole area of the Tyrannian Coast.”