Island Made Famous By Dumas to Open for 3,000 Visitors

One of the world's most fabled yet least accessible spots is to be opened to the public for the first time in decades.

Some 3,000 visitors a year are to be allowed onto Montecristo, the island that lies off Tuscany and at the heart of Alexandre Dumas's chronicle of injustice and revenge, The Count of Monte Cristo

The book revolves around a treasure supposedly hidden on the island by an Italian cardinal. After escaping from a jail in which he has been unjustly imprisoned, the book's hero Edmond Dantes finds a chest divided into three compartments in a cave within a cave.

The first section contains gold coins; the second, gold bars; and in the third "handfuls of diamonds, pearls, and rubies, which, as they fell on one another, sounded like hail against glass".

Modern visitors will discover the island does hide treasure, but of a different sort. Montecristo, the loneliest spot in the Tuscan archipelago, south of Elba, has never had a stable human population, so its animal and plant life have been left to flourish undisturbed. Numerous species that died out in other parts of the Mediterranean survive there. And there is a snake, the Montecristo viper, that is unique to the island. The surrounding waters are among the last refuges of the Mediterranean monk seal, one of the world's most endangered creatures.

Montecristo forms part of the national park of the Tuscan archipelago. Its only year-round human inhabitants are two lighthouse keepers.

Until now the only visitors have been the owners of private boats with special permission from the park authorities. According to a report in yesterday's Corriere della Sera, a decision to increase the number of visitors was taken at the last meeting of the park council.

Of the 3,000 people let in every year, only a third will get full access to Montecristo's grass and granite expanses and then only on conducted tours and after a spell of instruction. "On the day before the organised visits, we shall be arranging courses of environmental education," said Mario Tozzi, the park's president.

The remaining 2,000 visitors will have to content themselves with a visit to Montecristo's tiny natural history museum. And no one will be allowed to stay overnight. That may be just as well, though. Italian legend has it that Montecristo is indeed inhabited, but by ghosts.