Montecristo (island)
| Montecristo | ||
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| Waters | Tyrrhenian Sea | |
| Archipelago | Tuscan Archipelago | |
| Geographical location | 42 ° 19 '54 " N , 10 ° 18' 28" E | |
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| length | 4 km | |
| width | 3.5 km | |
| surface | 10.39 km² | |
| Highest elevation | Fortezza 645 m slm |
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| Residents | 2 (2008) <1 inh / km² |
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Montecristo is an Italian island halfway between Corsica and mainland Italy, south of Elba and west of Giglio . The island, today uninhabited except for a ranger station, belongs to the Tuscan Archipelago and rests on a granite base . Administratively it is part of the municipality of Portoferraio .
The entire island surface of 1039 ha was designated as a nature reserve by the Italian government in 1970 and may only be entered with special permission. Only a limited number of visitors are allowed. Until 2018 the maximum limit was 1000 visitors annually; 2000 visitors per year have been admitted since 2019. From 2019, access to the island is chargeable and only possible between March 2nd and April 15th and between May 15th and October 31st. For reasons of bird protection, no entry is permitted between April 16 and May 14. Registration for the visit is possible online from mid-February (as of 2019) and includes the transfer from Piombino Marittima and Porto Azzurro on Elba and, in some cases, from Porto Santo Stefano and the island of Giglio after payment in advance . The number of permitted visitors is limited to 75 people per calendar day. In addition to visiting the island by prior arrangement, including a ship transfer, you can take private boats to Montecristo. In this case, the visit will be carried out by the Carabinieri forestry staff. The prices depend on the hull length of the ship and the number of people on board. A ship can be approved with a maximum of 15 people on board per day. Since there is no infrastructure on the island, it is not possible to provide food, drink or medical supplies. Bathing on the island of Montecristo is prohibited all year round.
Feral goats have lived on the island for centuries , and because of their isolation from their conspecifics, they are interesting for genetic research and are also known in research as Montecristo goats .
The highest point is the Monte della Fortezza ( 645 m slm ).
There are only the following buildings on Montecristo: the ruins of a 13th century monastery - this was founded in the 7th century and destroyed by pirates under the leadership of the Dragut in 1553 - the mid-19th century villa of the British art collector George Watson Taylor and the ranger's station.
history
The beginnings of the settlement of Montecristos are probably in the Neolithic (5th to 6th millennium BC). In 1994 a large number of partly richly decorated ceramic shards and a flint artifact were excavated in the bay of Cala Maestra ; In 2000, a millstone and other flints were discovered at the same location at a depth of around one meter. The first finds, however, go back to Gaetano Chierici (1819-1886) , an Italian paleontologist, ethnographer and priest, who was able to testify to three flints as early as 1875.
Before the above-mentioned founding of the monastery in the 7th century, a community of monks had settled on Montecristo at least since the end of the 6th century and believed that they belonged to the Roman Catholic creed. In 591 AD Pope Gregory the Great sent an abbot named Orosius to take care of the monastic community.
Literary setting
The island is famous as one of the settings in Alexandre Dumas ' novel The Count of Monte Christo , but the real island and that of the novel have little in common.
Web links
- Info and photos about Montecristo (German)
Individual evidence
- ^ Isola di Montecristo. Parco Nazionale Arcipelago Toscano , accessed April 16, 2019 (Italian).
- ↑ The Forbidden Island. Focus Online , May 27, 2002, accessed April 16, 2019 .
- ↑ Gaetano Chierici: Una visita all'isola di Monte Cristo, manoscritto presso la Biblioteca comunale Panizzi di Reggio Emilia .
- ↑ Gregory the Great: The Letters Of Gregory The Great . In: John RC Martyn (Ed.): Translation of Registrum epistularum . tape 1 , Ep. 1.49. Library And Archives Canada Cataloging In Publication, Toronto / Ontario, Canada 2004, ISBN 0-88844-290-4 .