The Island of Monte Christo
A diamond shaped jewel in the brilliant blue of the Mediterranean Sea, the island of Monte Christo has enthralled many a reader when it was the centre of an exceptional and exciting novel The Count of Monte Christo by Alexander Dumas.
Now this beautiful Italian island, just of the coast of Tuscany, will be open to upto a thousand visitors every year in two sessions, the first beginning from April 1 to July 15 and the other session beginning from August 31 to late October.
Let me tell you more about this mysterious and beautiful island which I hope you will enjoy visiting with us. We will register you for a day of lecture sessions which are vital for us to take you around the island. This isolated and fabled island, part of the Tuscan archipelago, is now been showcased as a tourist spot. Visitors are educated on its wonders and great care will be taken not only to sustain its environment but also to open its fabled treasures of a natural kind not only to scientists but also to visitors from all over the world.
The island of Monte Christo is about four kilometres at its widest and is situated off the Tuscan coast between Italy and the island of Corsica. This unspoilt island is a beautiful natural preserve with its hunting grounds filled with priceless and diverse natural resources included rare flora and fauna including the Monte Christo viper, and few rare bird species. The protected and endangered Mediterranean monk seal finds its last refuge in the waters surrounding Monte Christo. Thus the island can be rightfully be described as one of the best open air natural museums in the world.
Monte Christo has a history dating back to mystery and intrigue not only as outlined by Dumas but also as a result of its inhabitants who included pirates, saints and monks. Till today one can find the visible ruins of a monastery called San Mamiliano on Monte Christo Island. It has also been a part of Roman mythology, where it is considered to be one of the seven jewels that fell off Venus’s tiara into the Tyrrhenian Sea when she was bathing there.
Although we cannot promise you treasures in the form of gold coins, gold bars and precious stones including diamonds, rubies and pearls like Edmond Dantes, Dumas’s hero found on the island, we offer you treasures of a more permanent kind-amazing memories of the beauty and diversity of this little jewel of an island off the coast of our beautiful Tuscany.
