The Island of Montecristo

Montecristo is a small Italian island that gained considerable fame from the 19th century when it was associated with the character of the Count of Monte Cristo, a millionaire who buys a title of nobility, a well-traveled, multilingual man, with educated mannerisms, slightly petulant and snobbish, and a mysterious past, he is the protagonist of the homonymous work written by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870).

Aerial view of the island of Montecristo.

Alexandre Dumas was a renowned French writer and playwright, who in 1844 had published The Three Musketeers, his first great novel, which catapulted his career. Still in that year, Dumas was already working on other novels, as he had the habit of writing several books at the same time, thus, he launched in serial format, The Count of Monte Cristo, a work that presented the tragedy, overcoming, and revenge of the sailor Edmond Dantès, unjustly condemned to prison in the Château d'If, where he remained imprisoned for 14 years.

The work was published in five parts between 1844 and 1846, totaling more than a thousand pages. In any case, at the time some readers asked Dumas if the said island of Montecristo was real or if he had invented it. The answer is that it really exists.

Montecristo is a small island with a little over 10 km2, located in the Tyrrhenian Sea, part of the Tuscan archipelago, which includes the islands of Gorgona, Capraia, Pianosa, Giglio, Giannutri, and Elba (which became famous for having served as a prison for Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814-1815). Napoleon's imprisonment even serves as a historical backdrop for this novel, as Dantès is falsely accused.

Location of Montecristo island in the Tuscan archipelago, between Italy and Corsica.

In the novel, after Dantès escapes from prison in the Château d'If where he remained for fourteen years, a few months later he travels to the small island of Montecristo to find a hidden treasure dating back almost three hundred years. Upon finding the treasure inside a chamber, he becomes a millionaire, then begins to adopt other identities, including that of the Count of Monte Cristo, and nine years later he begins his revenge against the men who unjustly condemned him.

Unlike what Dumas shows in his book, the island does not have secret chambers, and it was not deserted, having been constantly inhabited for centuries. The Etruscans already frequented that island in ancient times, going there to extract stones. The Greeks called it Oglasa, while the Romans began to occupy it, undertaking different activities such as quarrying granite, raising goats, and fishing. During Ancient Rome, the island was known as Monte Jovis, because in the center there is a hill more than 600 meters high. The island was dedicated to Jupiter or Jove (Zeus in the Greek version).

Montecristo only received this name during the Middle Ages, when in the 6th century the Monastery of São Mamiliano was founded, dedicated to this saint who supposedly lived on the island, in a cave, and died there in the 5th century. In fact, later on, the legend arose that the monks of this monastery had a hidden treasure, something that even influenced Dumas to choose this island for his novel.

The monks who lived in isolation there renamed the island as the "mount of Christ", shortening it to Montecristo. This monastery still exists, although it is deactivated. Tourists usually go to it and even to the Grotto of São Mamiliano, the place where the saint is said to have lived at the end of his life. However, in Dumas's novel, there is no mention of these places.

Ruins of the Monastery of Saint Mamiliano in Montecristo.

Besides this monastery, the island also had a small fortification called Fortaleza de Montecristo, a military structure built in the 15th century to serve as local protection and a watchtower for those waters that were plagued by pirates and privateers. The fortress was built by the Appiano, a rich family of noble merchants, who, to secure their business in the Tyrrhenian Sea, invested in its defense. This fortification also does not exist in Dumas's book. The fortress was eventually abandoned in the Modern Age, with few ruins remaining today.

Ruins of the Fortress of Montecristo.

Currently, the island is administratively part of the municipality of Portoferraio, in the province of Livorno. Few people live on the island, as there is a village there and even a small museum. Since the 1970s, the island has been made a nature reserve and has been reforested, although it is still a slow process, as the native forest was practically deforested, a condition that makes the island, when seen from the sky, appear to be an immense rock in the middle of the sea. Tourism to the island exists.

References:

PERIA, Gloria; FERRUZI, Silvestre. L'isola d'Elba e il culto di San Mamiliano. Portoferraio: [s.e], 2010.

ZECCHINI, Michelangelo. L'archeologia nell'Arcipalago Toscano. Pisa: Pacini, 1971.