Tremiti Islands
| Tremiti Islands | |
|---|---|
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| Waters | Adriatic |
| Geographical location | 42 ° 7 ′ N , 15 ° 30 ′ E |
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| Number of islands | 5 |
| Main island | San Domino |
| Total land area | 3.13 km² |
| Residents | 489 (2016) |
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The Tremiti Islands , Italian Isole Tremiti (also called Diomedes Islands ) are an archipelago that lies in the Italian Adriatic Sea in the region of Apulia , 12 nautical miles north of the Gargano peninsula and 24 nautical miles east of the coast off Molise . The archipelago with a total area of about three square kilometers forms the municipality of the same name with 458 inhabitants (as of December 31, 2019) and belongs to the province of Foggia . The municipality is part of the Gargano National Park . Since 1989, part of the municipality has been declared a marine nature reserve "Riserva naturale marina Isole Tremiti". The islands are one of the main tourist attractions in the region.
Islands
| island | Area ( ha ) |
Residents 2008 |
Max. height |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Nicola | 42 | 131 | 75 |
| San Domino | 208 | 236 | 116 |
| Capraia | 45 | - | 53 |
| Pianosa | 13 | - | 15th |
| Cretaccio | 4th | - | 30th |
| La Vecchia | 0.1 | - | ... |
| Tremiti Islands | 313 | 496 | 116 |
geography
The archipelago consists of five islands. Only San Domino and San Nicola are inhabited . The islands:
- San Nicola , on which most of the inhabitants and the most important historical buildings of the archipelago are located,
- San Domino , formerly called “Tremetis”, is the largest of the islands, with the most tourist businesses thanks to the only sandy beach (Cala delle Arene) in the archipelago.
- Capraia (also Caprara or Capperaia), the second largest island, uninhabited, part of the nature reserve.
- Pianosa , an uninhabited rock area, about 20 km northeast of the other islands. At the highest point it rises only 15 meters from the sea. During strong storms, the waves sometimes completely wash the island.
- Il Cretaccio is a large limestone and clay cliff between San Domino and San Nicola.
- La Vecchia is a smaller cliff close to Cretaccio.
climate
The islands have a distinct Mediterranean climate with the following characteristics:
- Temperature - mild winters, hot summers. There is no pronounced summer dry period.
- Precipitation - low, as rain almost exclusively in autumn and winter (~ 476 mm mean annual precipitation).
- Winds - there are winds from the 2nd ( Levante , Scirocco ) and the 4th quadrant ( Poniente , Tramontana , Maestrale ).
- Sea - mostly calm in summer, storm surges and storms more frequent in autumn and winter.
history
Prehistory and early history
Numerous prehistoric finds attest to human settlement since the 7th millennium BC. A Neolithic settlement was excavated on the island of San Domino , in which pottery with impressed and incised patterns, scrapers and clams were found. The spectrographic examination of the obsidian finds revealed that they come from the island of Lipari . During excavations in the Benedictine abbey of S. Domino, many fragments from different epochs from the Iron Age to the Hellenistic period have come to light: dishes, skeletal parts, amphorae with Roman and Latin inscriptions.
Antiquity
In ancient times, the islands were since the 4th century BC. Chr. Inhabited. They were used as a place of exile early on. In the Imperium Romanum , Emperor Augustus banished the granddaughter Julia the younger there, allegedly because of immorality, but probably because of participating in a conspiracy against him. Julia died here in AD 28 after twenty years of forced residency.
middle Ages
The Benedictines played a decisive role in the settlement and reclamation of the Tremiti Islands. Its history in the Middle Ages coincides with the history of the abbey.
On the island of San Nicola there was a small church in an elevated position, the nucleus of the cultural, economic and spiritual center of the islands, the Abbey of Santa Maria a Mare , which the art historian Émile Bertaux called the Montecassino in the middle of the sea . It is doubtful whether the Benedictine monastery of S. Maria a Mare already existed in the 8th century. The report of the Leo of Ostia , Charlemagne had Paul the Deacon sent there in exile, but this flight was a success, is fictitious.
After the Chartularium Tremitense , the monastery was built in the 9th century as a direct branch of the Benedictine Abbey of Montecassino . However, the first abbot is only recorded in 1005. The abbey had its most splendid time in the 11th century. Property and wealth had grown so much that the abbot Alderich replaced the church with a larger new building, which was consecrated in 1045 by the bishop of Dragonara (today the diocese of San Severo ). Numerous donations from secular lords brought extensive possessions on the mainland, especially in Marshland, in the Principate of Benevento and in the dioceses of Siponto , Vieste , Troia and Dragonara. After becoming independent in the 13th century, the monastery owned lands on the mainland from the Biferno River in the Molise region to the Apulian town of Trani . In a bull dated April 22, 1256, Pope Alexander IV confirmed all the possessions of the monastic community.
In 1038 Konrad II had taken the abbey under his protection at the request of Abbot Deodatus, which Heinrich III. 1054 confirmed, even if the empire could not exercise permanent rule in southern Italy. Close, increasingly tense relationships existed with Montecassino : Friedrich von Lothringen, who later became Pope Stephen IX. , has escaped from Heinrich III. temporarily withdrawn to Tremiti.
The rich library under Abbot Eustasius around 1175 is known for the preserved book directory.
Leo IX placed the abbey directly under the Holy See, but under Nicholas II , Montecassino tried to incorporate the monastery, but without lasting success. Abbot Desiderius (Daupherius Epiphani) was able to exercise supervisory authority, Urban II and his successors had Tremiti included in the property lists of privileges for Montecassino, but the island monastery was finally able to maintain its independence, as the entry in the Liber censuum shows . In 1237 an abbot's oath of allegiance was added there. The quarrels with the mother house on the one hand, the looting of islands and monasteries by pirates in the time of Innocent III. on the other hand ushered in the spiritual and worldly decline. The of Gregory IX. Ordered reforms led to the connection of the monastery to the Cistercian Abbey Casanova in the diocese of Penne . In 1237, on the mandate of the Pope, Cardinal Rainer von Viterbo made it subordinate to Casanova.
As a result, Charles of Anjou had the abbey built with fortifications. In 1334 it was conquered and plundered by Corsarian Almogavars from Almissa in Dalmatia, which had developed into a feared center of piracy in the Adriatic. The corsairs killed all the monks and the Cistercian period on the Tremiti ended. The abbey began to deteriorate.
In 1412, after various orders had refused to take over , the monastery association went by order of Pope Gregory XII. to the Augustinian Canons of the Lateran , who came from San Frediano in Lucca and were led by Leone da Carrara. They restored the monastery, expanded it, built numerous cisterns, some of which still function today, and enlarged the monastery property on the Gargano , in Molise and in the Bari area .
Modern times
The abbey of San Nicola was subsequently consolidated so that in 1567 it defied the onslaught of the Soliman the Magnificent's fleet .
In 1783 the monastery was abolished by King Ferdinand IV of Naples . In the same year a penal colony was established on the islands.
During the Napoleonic period , followers of the Neapolitan King Joachim Murat occupied the islands and holed up in the fortress. They successfully repelled attacks by the English fleet in 1809 - the impacts of the English cannonballs can still be seen on the facade of the abbey. Murat pardoned the deportees who had taken part in the defense against the English. With this the islands became depopulated.
In 1843 another colonization took place: Ferdinand II settled poor Neapolitans who could live from the rich fishing grounds around the islands. Therefore, the Tremitesi still speak a Neapolitan and not an Apulian dialect today.
In 1911 the Giolitti government deported around 1,300 Libyans who had resisted the Italian occupation of Libya to the Tremiti. After about a year, a third of them had died of typhus . Three quarters of a century later, in 1987, Muammar al-Gaddafi took these events as an opportunity to claim the islands as part of Libyan territory, which heightened diplomatic tensions between Italy and Libya.
During the fascist era , the islands remained a place of exile . Prominent prisoners included the future President Sandro Pertini and Amerigo Dumini . Several hundred homosexuals were also interned on the island of San Domino , although there was no law against homosexuality .
The islands were granted municipal autonomy in 1932.
Legends
Diomedes
In the past, the islands were also known as "the islands of Diomedes ", who is said to have been stranded here after the Trojan War . Legend has it that Diomedes hid on the island on one of his wanderings after the Trojan War. After his death, his companions in the war mourned and were transformed into white birds by Venus to follow him into the sky, into those of Pliny the Elder. Ä. so-called Aves Diomedeae (zoologically the yellow-billed shearwater , Calonectris diomedea , not to be confused with the genus of the albatross Diomedea ).
Nicholas
The monk Nicolò is buried in the monastery on San Nicola. According to legend, every time someone tried to remove their remains from the island, a heavy storm would have risen.
traffic
Year-round ship connections only exist from Termoli (with the Tirrenia di Navigazione ), in the tourist season from June to September the islands can also be reached by ship from Pescara , Ortona , Vasto , Vieste , Manfredonia , Peschici or Rodi Garganico (until the end of August) can be achieved. During this time, several shipping companies are active, including with speedboats, so that trips from Pescara, Ortona and Vasto are also quickly possible.
There is a shuttle service to the port from the Termoli train station , where all long-distance trains stop.
You cannot bring your own car to the islands.
In addition, a helicopter can fly from Foggia to the San Domino heliport in 20 minutes all year round .
Gargano National Park
The archipelago has been part of the Parco Nazionale del Gargano nature reserve since 1991 . The Italian national parks are divided into different protection zones. The island of Pianosa is located in the highest protection zone A - access is prohibited. Parts of Capraia and the west coast of San Domino belong to the second highest protection zone B.
literature
- Walther Holtzmann : Italia Pontificia IX: Samnium - Apulia - Lucania. Berlin 1962, pp. 178-186.
- Armando Petrucci : Codice diplomatico del monastero benedettino di S. Maria di Tremiti (1005-1237). Rome 1960. (Fonti per la storia d'Italia, 98)
- Matthias Egeler: The Plane Trees of Diomedes: Staging the Islands of the Blessed in the Adriatic Sea , in: Numen 62 (2015), pp. 495-518.
- Charles B. McClendon: The Church of S. Maria di Tremiti and Its Significance for the History of Romanesque Architecture. In: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Vol. 43, No. 1. (Mar., 1984), pp. 5-19.
- Donatella Langiano, Edoardo Agresti: Isole Tremiti e Termoli. Casa Editrice Polaris Firenze 2010, ISBN 978-88-6059-049-7 .
Web links
- Information at comuni-italiani.it (Italian)
- Tremiti Islands
- More information (Italian)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The data refer to the measurements of the station San Nicola over 20 years ( 1959 - 1979 ), published in the meteorological annals ISTAT .
- ↑ a b The data refer to the measurements 1930 - 1946 the sea meteorological station on the island Pelagosa (about 37 nautical miles east-northeast of the Tremiti Islands), published by the Istituto idrografico della Marina in Genoa .
- ↑ Rivista di Merceologia, Volume 19, Fascicle 1, January / February 1980, ed. from the Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria di Bologna. < http://www.lecinqueisole.it/storia/ossidiane.html#testo >
- ^ Émile Bertaux: Un Mont-Cassin en plein mer . 1899.
- ↑ Chronica monasterii Casinensis I, 15
- ↑ DKII. 272
- ↑ DHIII. 323
- ^ Armando Petrucci: L'archivio e la biblioteca del monastero benedettino di Santa Maria di Tremiti. In ' Bull API. ns 2-3, 1956-1957, pp. 291-307.
- ^ Article in Die Zeit about the Italian crimes in Libya
- ↑ Mussolini declared that there were only "real men" in Italy, and people who were suspected or reported not to be were deported, and in many cases executed. See The Independent : Italy finally ready to recognize the suffering of gays in Holocaust , January 21, 2005
- ^ A gay island community created by Italy's Fascists