Tavolara - the smallest kingdom: an island whose inhabitants wanted to become monarchs (6 photos)

Tavolara, it seems, can be considered the smallest kingdom in the world, unless no one begins to challenge this status of a small island off the coast of Sardinia. Perhaps the situation will be more reminiscent of the joke about “Elusive Joe” - no one was really going to argue with a certain Giuseppe Bertoleoni, who, upon arriving on the island, took and proclaimed himself king.





Tavolara Island

The island is really small - 5 kilometers long and 1 kilometer wide. It is a limestone rock jutting straight out of the sea.

There are bays on both sides of the island, so swimming to it is quite convenient. And on a small spit, which is almost the only non-rocky place on the island, there is even a sandy beach.

The highest point of the island, Monte Cannone (and in fact the entire island is the top of an underwater mountain), has a height of 565 meters - the view from the top is excellent.

So, Giuseppe Bertoleoni, who fled from Genoa in 1807 and settled on this small island, became a full-fledged master here and declared himself king. It sounds funny, but in fact, the rest of the kingdoms in the world appeared in much the same way...



View of the same spit with the beach from the top of the island of Tavolara

In general, Giuseppe Bertoleoni initially decided to breed goats with gold teeth on the island. Apparently, this is not something mythical - it’s just that the local goats actually had yellow teeth due to the peculiarities of the local diet.

Bertoleoni arrived with his family, after some time, apparently, some other people arrived - there was someone to reign over.

The most interesting thing is that Carlo Alberto, who ruled Sardinia at that time, arrived on the island, met Bertoleoni and easily agreed with his royal title.

On the one hand, historians talk about this, referring only to the words of the head of the kingdom Tavolara himself, who met with Carlo Alberto.





Tavolara is a beautiful place, but walking, as we can see from the fence and the sign on it, is not possible everywhere

On the other hand, in fact, the island was not included in the Kingdom of Sardinia, which is recorded in documents of 1767. The island remained for a long time the property of the Bertoleoni family, from which a whole royal dynasty emerged.

So after Giuseppe, his son became king, who took the name Paolo I (this was after the death of Giuseppe in 1845), then Carlo I and his son Paolo II - but this is already talking about the 20th century.

It is interesting that during the unification of Italy in 1861, the island of Tavolara did not become part of Italy - since it was not part of Sardinia, apparently. But it never became a recognized state.

Although, for example, it is known that the British Queen Victoria sent a photographer to the Bertoleoni family to replenish her collection of portraits of the world's monarchs.



And this is the old Tavolar cemetery, where one of the local “kings” is buried. It seems that the diagram on the table is something like a dynastic directory

And Italy eventually signed a certain treaty of friendship between the countries with Tavolara, and in 1868 it rented land on the island, paying fairly. A lighthouse appeared on this piece of land.

But later, in 1962, the Italians simply captured the island, leaving only 50 hectares for the kingdom. Ask why they captured? Not for myself.

That same year, NATO troops arrived on the island and built a military radar station and transmitters for communication with submarines. They say that antennas in the form of masts 100-130 meters high have also become a unique landmark of Travolara.

However, the Bertoleoni family remained the owners of their plot of land - representatives of the “royal dynasty” even tried to obtain the status of the smallest kingdom at the UN.



The tip of the island is shaded on the map - this is the territory of a NATO military base

It is not clear, however, whether this status should have been received by the island or from 50 hectares. One way or another, with the advent of a military base, a large number of people living on the island left it - now only a few families of potential “king’s subjects” are listed as living here.

The northern part of the island is completely inaccessible to visitors, but in general there are a lot of tourists on the island - fortunately, it’s very close to Sardinia itself.

The current head of the Bertoleoni family, named Tonino, runs the only local restaurant (although some guidebooks write that there are two of them) - the opportunity to visit “the smallest kingdom in the world”, of course, would add more customers to the “king”.



Tavolara Island from the side of the NATO military base - one of the antennas is even visible