The well-kept secrets and techniques of Montecristo, the “island-tresor” of the Mediterranean | EUROtoday

On Apr 23, 2025

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DEtuis the heights of Bastia (Haute-Corse), in clear climate, you may see its granite silhouette detach on the horizon. That of the island of Montecristo – “the mountain of Christ”, within the language of Dante. A confetti of ten small sq. kilometers wrapped in its mist, midway between Corsica and Tuscany. “It is she who decides to show herself or not,” say the outdated sailors.

The most secret of the islands of the Tuscan archipelago likes to distance itself. Difficult to strategy it: navigation is prohibited lower than a kilometer from the shore. The island is a effectively -kept treasure. To get there, a go to allow is required, however this tour is price: solely 2,000 guests can set foot there yearly.

The others know this mysterious island solely by way of literature. Because the island is particularly well-known for having served as a setting for the novel by Alexandre Dumas, Count of Monte-Cristoin 1844. “The visits had been made solely with licensed guides so as to have the ability to management the influence on the setting, explains Colonel Giovanni Quilghini, boss of the Carabinieri division, the nationwide gendarmerie physique of the Italian Republic, answerable for monitoring Montecristo. The island is totally devoted to conservation. It is, from this standpoint, a novel area within the Mediterranean. »»

“A real biodiversity hotspot”

For those that have the possibility to go to this granitic territory, it’s found by harsh mountain paths ranging from a deal with, the Cala Maestra. The solely MONTECRISTO entrance door. This island is stored because the treasure which as soon as impressed the character of Edmond Dantès to Dumas and nonetheless haunts generations of readers. A paradise for rabbits, reptiles and quite a few bugs that evolve between the tufts of untamed rosemary.

The island of Montecristo is the most effective protected marine and terrestrial nature reserve since its creation in 1971, and much more since its rating, six years later by the Council of Europe, as a biogenetic reserve. Uninhabited, other than two guards who monitor the premises, she homes only some hundred wild goats, a race of ibex that has acclimatized to the locations since its importation by navigators.

For the previous ten years, the Biologist Francesca Giannini, very connected to this ecosystem which homes one of many oldest flora within the Mediterranean, has been engaged on an bold mission: making certain the safety of its biodiversity. “Our mission is to maintain the island, to observe fauna and flora in this very protected environment, which is a real biodiversity hotspot,” says this agent of the Tuscan archipelago. Certain species, akin to wild goats and endemic viper, don’t exist wherever else. »»

A hermitage place that has turn into … a penitentiary colony

The island of Montecristo is certainly one of its form: by its morphology, by its fauna and its flora. But the singular historical past that surrounds it additionally takes on its share of thriller. Frequented throughout Antiquity by the Etruscans, the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, the island was utilized by the Romans as a granite profession for the development of patrician villas on the neighboring islands of the archipelago.

At V^eA century, it supplied a refuge in San Mamiliano, the Archbishop of Palermo, fleeing the King of the Vandals. For virtually a millennium, Benedictine monks lived as hermitites within the Saint Cave, which nonetheless exists. Thus stays the legend of a substantial treasure collected in an abbey by the non secular.

Will she have impressed Dumas to relate the existence of the Treasury bequeathed by Father Faria to Dantès? The thriller stays entire. Like that of the top of the presence of monks on the island, pushed in 1553 by the Turkish pirate Dragut, in response to oral custom. When Dumas toured it by boat with Prince Napoleon, in 1842, the island was uninhabited.

It solely serves as a refuge for pirates and different smugglers. This outdated Caillou will solely return to life after the publication of his novel. In 1852, the British George Watson-Taylor purchased the island. This botanist introduces many plant species. He additionally constructed the villa that’s nonetheless there right this moment. But its passage will solely be brief -lived. In 1874, Monte-Cristo was reworked into… penitentiary colony! Some detainees are held there in agricultural work, underneath the supervision of a handful of guards.

An enchanting place surrounded by fantasies

The magnificence of those wild locations later will make them the privileged searching floor of the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III. But this vacation exercise has additionally fed the fantasies. At the top of the Sixties, an Italian firm developed an unprecedented mission: changing this utterly virgin area right into a luxurious tourism heart.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

But the concept of seeing this island with the distinctive ecosystem delivered to concrete and vacationer actions arouses shields in scientific circles and public opinion of the peninsula. The classification of Montecristo in a nature reserve by the Italian State can have put an finish to those brief speculations.

Since then, the impossibility of set foot on this island solely feeds the parable. It takes a mean of three years of ready to be delivered the valuable sesame permitting to dock. Those who will not be fortunate to eliminate it solely must adjust to the maxim of Edmond Dantès: “Wait and hope. »»

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