History
Ever since I was a child, I always believed, because that's how we were told, that the'island of Giglio was really born from one of the seven pearls of Venus, and I believed in it so much that sometimes, on summer nights when it is becalmed and the sea looks like a shiny board, I felt like I could really hear her singing, her love song, Venus wandering in search of her lost pearls. Discovering that the island already existed, in fact long before the Greeks and their gods, it existed in prehistoric times, in the Paleolithic as evidenced by the megalithic remains of the Cote Ciombella in Giglio Castello and the Dolmen on the path from the Cannelle to the Castle, was a traumatic event for me, one of those moments that mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. Like when I found out that Santa Claus does not exist, in short. At that moment you wished that you didn't exist either and that Christmas itself no longer existed either because after all, removed from the religious sphere that now remains a privilege of the few, what sense does Christmas make without Santa Claus? And what is the point of an island that has no legendary genesis?
Having abandoned the celestial myths, the earthly deeds of the earthly peoples remained, and to find out what events this little patch of rock had been involved in over the centuries amen I had to turn to Armando, the island's doctor, medical conduit and official historian, a very important personality in the island community, a monument I would say. Thanks to him I found out that indeed the "little reef" during the centuries was a center of trade first of the Etruscans who exploited the iron deposits of Campese, then of the Romans in particular of the Enobarbi, who built a very luxurious patrician villa in the area "Castellare", the current area of the Port known as the Saracen or "Ban Saracino" for the Giglio people, were slave owners and traded with the imperial capital, wine, oil, grain and fish raised in the "Cetaria" whose remains can still be seen today in the Saracen cove. With the arrival of the Visigoths in Italy and the conquest of Rome, Giglio, already then as now became a refuge for many Romans who took refuge here to escape the barbarian conquest.
In the coming years just before 1000 it became a refuge for the Bishop Mamiliano, was Saint, who wanted to be buried here after his death in Montecristo, an island chosen as a refuge from Genseric's pursuits. From San Mamiliano Today the Lily is left with only one arm, returned to the parish centuries later, in the 17th century, thanks to the intercession of Msgr. Miliani, Gigliese doc, at the time a cleric in the chamber of the Pope Innocent XIII. I don't know how it is possible but it always ends up that in every room of power there is a hidden Gigliese who manages to intercede for everyone. In any case, thanks to Msgr. Miliani we also managed to obtain an ivory Christ belonging precisely to the Pope and attributed to the Gian Bologna, now enshrined in the Parish of Lily Castle.
Meanwhile, before the arm returned home, the island became a fiefdom of the Monastery of the Three Fountains and a place devoted to lively monastic activity, to which the island still lends itself especially at certain times of the year such as, precisely winter.
It later became the property of Margaret, daughter of Aldobrandino Count entrustee of the Monastery of the Three Fountains. Once Margaret had been excommunicated by Pope Boniface VIII, on charges of "fellonias et excessus enormes", (poor! Only for not being satisfied with her first husband and having had to try four others before finding a decent mate) The fief of Ansedonia of which Giglio was a part became the subject of bitter disputes between the Aldobrandeschi and Orsini families on the one hand and the Caetani on the other.
I do not know how the affair between these families actually ended, because since it was mainly internal family affairs that did not involve the fate of the island in any way Armando preferred to gloss over it.
We thus arrived at the XI sec. Under the rule of the Pisans who began to build the Castle with the Rock and the entire city wall and a few years later the tower of the Port and the Lazaretto, now a private residence, still visible on the promontory precisely of the Lazaretto just outside the Port. At this time and precisely May 3 1241 the waters of our beloved little island became the battlefield of a major naval clash that took place between the fleet of the'Emperor Frederick II composed largely of Pisan galleys and the fleet of the Republic of Genoa allied with the Pope, in which the Emperor got the better of the Genoese.
In 1406 when the Florentines conquered Pisa, the Gigliesi became Florentine subjects until the 1448 when soldiers from the naval armada of Alfonso of Aragon, King of Naples and established a garrison of his own at the lily until 1460 when he ceded it to the Republic of Siena. From here onward began the years of corsair raids. The first, the most ruinous occurred in 1534 by Ariademo Barbarossa who captured as many as 700 inhabited conducted slaves in Constantinople. The last the most epic occurred on the November 18, 1799 and it is at this point in history that it resumed taking on legendary traits.
In fact, it is said that a few, scattered men and women were able to soundly defeat seven "shills" who came to the Campese Bay and loads of thousands of men. Thus, between cannon shots fired from atop the Casamatta, vile acts by soldiers guarding the Campese Tower who upon the arrival of the sciabbecchi avoided firing even a single shot, wine wineskins destroyed, lest the Turks get drunk before the assault, and intercessions of the saints all and in particular of the saint par excellence, San Mamiliano and his sacred arm pulled out for the occasion, the Gigliese managed to put the Turks to flight, who, according to later accounts, counted about 500 dead and wounded during the assault. Since that day, no more pirate Turks have been seen off the island's coast, and always since that day, every year, we celebrate San Mamiliano Of the Turks.
The end of pirate raids in the Mediterranean Sea also marked the flourishing of coastal centers, including just Giglio Porto which shortly thereafter assumed the role, which it still retains, as the island's commercial center. Ligurians and southerners mostly fishermen came to repopulate the port. From then on life flowed quietly until the second postwar period when tourism developed--but this is too mundane and recent a story for it to be worth telling.