Geography, History, Culture, Tourism, Economy
As a sign of the determination to impart a fresh boost to areas struck by the earthquake on 6 April, the Italian Cabinet proposed to shift the upcoming G8 Summit from the island of La Maddalena, in Sardinia, to Abruzzo.
In the next few days the website will be gradually updated on the new events.
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Twixt Wind and Sea, Stepping Stones Between Sardinia and Corsica
Nelson, Napoleon and Garibaldi Put Ashore on These Lonely Rocks
A Future Beyond the Military Economy
Twixt Wind and Sea, Stepping Stones Between Sardinia and Corsica
The Maddalena Archipelago unfurls off the north-eastern coast of Sardinia and, leaving aside its numerous rocks and islets, comprises seven main islands split into two groups: La Maddalena (after which the archipelago is named), Caprera and Santo Stefano to the north-east, and Spargi, Budelli, Razzoli and Santa Maria to the north-west. The Strait of Bonifacio opens up to the north of the latter group, marking the boundary between Italian and French territorial waters.
The archipelago has an overall surface area of almost 50 km2. La Maddalena is the largest island, with an area of 20 km2 and a 13,000-strong population. The island’s terrain is unsuited to arable farming and is largely covered by Mediterranean scrub. The coastline is mainly rocky and marked by granite formations sculpted over the centuries by the wind and sea.
Its luxuriant Mediterranean vegetation, beaches, bays and granite rock make it a land of rare beauty and enormous naturalistic, historical and cultural value. This is borne out by the creation, in 1994, of a National Reserve safeguarding all the local resources, recognised by the European Community as a site of special interest and universally regarded as one of the world’s most striking landscapes in terms of its morphology, flora, waters and marine ecosystem. The reserve is visited by Italian and international scientists and naturalists who find there an ideal natural environment for studying species now extinct elsewhere: rare plant species typical of the Mediterranean, birds – such as the extremely rare Corsican seagull – that have found it an ideal habitat and breeding ground, and a marine fauna featuring a wealth of species now hard to find.
Nelson, Napoleon and Garibaldi Put Ashore on These Lonely Rocks
La Maddalena has been a silent witness of memorable events. Napoleon, Nelson and Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose long stay on the island of Caprera left a lasting mark on his life, all spent time on its lonely, windswept rocks.
The archipelago’s islands were already known in Roman days under the name of “Cunicularie” (the Rabbit Islands) and were regarded as being of strategic importance and as a useful port of call for Roman shipping bound for northern Sardinia and the Gallic and Iberian coasts.
Like Sardinia, the archipelago was shrouded in silence for many a long year after the fall of the Roman Empire, isolated from events on the continent, at the mercy of raids by the Saracen pirates and their Pisan and Genoan opponents, who dubbed the archipelago the “Isole dei Carrugi,” or islands of alleyways.
The islands were uninhabited until the 16th century, when Corsican herdsmen, the archipelago’s first permanent inhabitants, began settling there. Sardinia came under Savoy rule in 1720, but the Corsican shepherds evaded the control of the Savoy government until the Sardo-Piedmontese herdsmen landed on La Maddalena, in 1767, to bring the King of Sardinia undisputed ownership of the “Islands in the Middle,” to which Bonifacio, and hence Genoa, also laid claim. A military detachment was thus stationed on the island, and it began to be settled by Sardinian and Corsican families. This was, indeed, the start of the island’s political and administrative organisation, with the birth of the island community.
In 1793, during the war between the French Republic and the Kingdom of Sardinia, La Maddalena was the scene of the first defeat suffered by young artillery captain Napoleon Bonaparte. Helmsman Domenico Millelire from La Maddalena distinguished himself among the local militias that put the Franco-Corsicans to flight and was decorated with the Italian Navy’s first gold medal. Over 10 years later, Admiral Horatio Nelson put in to La Maddalena prior to embarking on his long pursuit of the French fleet that was to end at Cadiz, off Cape Trafalgar, where the admiral was to lose his life.
The arrival of the Hero of Two Worlds, Giuseppe Garibaldi, brought the Maddalena islands one of the most eventful episodes in their history. Garibaldi landed in the archipelago for the first time in 1849. On his arrest following the flight from Rome, he was exiled to Tunis, but the Bey refused to take him in, and the ship carrying him, captained by Domenico Millelire from La Maddalena, received orders to put him ashore on La Maddalena. Garibaldi was to spend a month as a guest of the Maddalena families who had fought with him in South America and Italy, finding there the ideal atmosphere for confronting a particularly tough period in his life, marked by the death of his wife, Anita, and the fall of the Roman Republic. Won over by the islands and their people, Garibaldi returned to La Maddalena in 1855/56 and settled permanently on the island of Caprera, purchasing half the island with a legacy left him by his brother. The old, tumbledown shepherd’s house that Garibaldi decided to restore was soon extended by the addition of annexes: the oven, the windmill, the storehouse and the stable, very soon turning into the focal point of a community of shepherds, sharecroppers and friends among whom Garibaldi turned his hand to farming and fishing.
La Maddalena’s real period of growth began around 1887, when the archipelago was chosen as the Italian Navy’s third major strategic base. The military presence grew in size, providing a constant supply of work in the form of maintenance of the defences, the building of new troop quarters and the modernisation of the available weaponry. The establishment of the Maritime Arsenal in 1895 filled the island with military and civilian personnel with extraordinary technical skills, capable of providing all the ships in the Italian fleet with support, repairs, refits and the replacement of any warship component, from weaponry to engines. The Maddalena naval base worked at full steam up until the end of World War II. Once the war was over, the island went back to its former life, bound up with that of the Italian Navy and its metamorphosis, but without identifying so closely with it and its fate. After the seventies, during which the number of its workshops and the extension of its specialist departments reached their height – its facilities covering 134,600 square metres –, the Arsenal gradually diminished in importance, as did the rest of the naval base, a bulwark rendered obsolete by a united Europe and the shift of the hottest fronts towards other areas of the world.
The US military base moved into the strait between the islands of La Maddalena and Santo Stefano in the seventies. The American flag was lowered last January, after 35 years, and the US Navy left the island. The Italian Navy still maintains a presence there with a number of facilities, detachments and operations, although La Maddalena no longer boasts an admiral. Indeed, 2008 brings the history of a deep, longstanding bond between the Navy and the archipelago to a close after over two centuries and opens another chapter recounting a different future, largely still to be written.
A Future Beyond the Military Economy
Since its incorporation into the Kingdom of Savoy, La Maddalena’s history has been marked by its role as a military stronghold, which has, over the years, moulded the island’s landscape and habits and been its chief economic resource for over a century.
The decommissioning of the Military Arsenal and the subsequent dismantling of the US base is opening up a new era for the island, calling not only for a rethinking of the use made of its old amenities, with a view to turning to advantage and converting the military architectural heritage and handing it back to the island’s inhabitants for their use, but also for the rebuilding of a future no longer based on a military economy. The G8 is a crucial milestone in this process of reclaiming and converting the island’s economy and setting it on a new course.
One major factor in the island’s economy has, in the past, been the working of the Cava Francese granite quarry, which was famed for the quality of its stone, as were La Maddalena’s stone-dressers, whose skills were in demand worldwide. Legend has it that the base of New York’s Statue of Liberty, too, is made of granite from La Maddalena. The quarry closed down in the second half of the 20th century.
The island’s seaside and coastline attract thousands of tourists every year, but it is first and foremost the Marine Reserve that holds out a major new development opportunity for the island’s future.
The archipelago’s chief tourist attraction is the Garibaldi Compendium on Caprera, the spot where the Hero of Two Worlds found peace and contentment after his many battles, and where he had a chance to ponder and gear up for the great feats that changed the face of Italian history.
The Garibaldi Compendium comprises the house, the buildings where the hero’s memorabilia are displayed and the cemetery where he is buried. Once Garibaldi’s property, the Compendium has been turned over to the Italian state, which had it restored and converted in 1978. It is one of the country’s most visited sites.
