Inside Italy’s forbidden Orgy Island known as ‘Zannone’

Surrounded by emerald-green waters and a lone villa, this tiny island holds a dark secret, and a very unexpected reputation.

In the depths of the Tyrrhenian Sea, surrounded by emerald-green waters lapping at a rugged, deserted scrap of land, an island with an unexpected reputation awaits.

Scattered among the Pontine Islands off the west coast of Italy, the uninhabited island of Zannone sits empty. But the earth under foot of those who choose to visit is full of history, and a very dark, sexy past.

As reported by CNN Travel, Zannone became a hotspot for tourists to visit after its history of hosting “lavish sex parties” was exposed.

The “chic and sexually adventurous aristocratic couple” Marquis Casati Stampa and his wife, Anna Fallarino rented it from the state in the ‘60s, and turned the one square kilometre sanctuary in to an orgy island.

There's no tourist facilities on the island, but that doesn't stop visitors from stopping by.

Spread across almost every weekend, the empty island of Zannone transformed into a secret holiday destination for aristocrats looking for erotic adventures in an intimate space.

Dozens of yachts belonging to dukes, barons, countesses, billionaires and other VIPs flocked to the villa that sat on the island’s highest hill.

Built illegally in the 1930s, the parties hosted by Stampa would roar in to the night, while guests the darkness of night collided with the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Anna Fallarino was shot dead by her husband, before he turned the gun on himself. Picture: AFP/ ©Farabola/Leemage

While the men went hunting, former actress Fallarino would fill her time with “skinny dipping in ancient Roman pools and entertaining herself on the beach with other men”.

Guests on the island would drink heavily, leaving a graveyard of bottles in their wake at the end of a rowdy weekend.

Some of the ruins found on the island.

The villa, according to CNN journalist Silvia Marchetti, would transform in to an adult playground for the guests venturing out to the island for their lavish weekend of sex and other activities. According to rumours, the main villa also featured a “hidden mirror room to spy on heavy sex sessions.”

“He was a lewd man, a voyeur who liked to watch and photograph his starlet wife get kinky having sex with other younger guys,” former fisherman Giorgio Aniello, who now runs boat tours to the island, said in an interview.

“The villa was a hot jet-society get-together,” former caretaker Salvatore Pagano, who once lived next door, recalled. “It was crazy here.”

The rugged landscape of Zannone island has a dark, sexy history.

Locals who lived on nearby islands said what went on at “sex parties isle” was common knowledge, “but nobody ever uttered a word about it”.

But after years of frivolity, the festivities that consumed the Italian island came to a murderous, bloody end.

On August 30, 1970, the Marquis Camillo Casati, his wife Anna and a friend were found dead, killed with blows from a firearm.

Marquis Casati Stampa and his wife Anna Fallarino. Picture: AFP/Farabola/Leemage

Blinded by anger, Casati’s love of the erotic games played out on the island turned to rage, and in a fit of rage he killed his wife, their friend and then turned the gun on himself in a murder suicide while at their home in Rome.

“He got fed up of the threesome, shot the two lovers and killed himself,” Mr Aniello said.

Decades later, the history of what would play out each weekend on the island attracts a number of tourists to the area to dip in the same waters as Anna Fallarino.

Reachable only by boat, the island is open to day-visits several times a week.