"has been detected in Sicily, 8% in the western part and 2% in the eastern. In two villages in Lazio and Abruzzo (Cappadocia and Vallepietra), I1 was recorded at levels 35% and 28%. In Sicily, further migrations from the Vandals, Normans and Saracens have only slightly affected the ethnic composition of the Sicilian people. However, Greek genetic legacy is estimated at 37% in Sicily. Norman civilization proliferated for several centuries on the island, with a strong impact on the culture of the place and different populations as Normans, Bretons, Anglo-Saxons, Swabians and Lombards have repopulated the island with a male"
"centuries the Island was assigned by emphyteusis to the Aldobrandeschi family of Sovana in 1269, to the Orsini of Pitigliano on June 15, 1410 and to Siena on August 12, 1452 by Pope Nicholas V award. The island changed several times of rule: Spanish, French and German and for sometimes became refuge of pirates and Saracens until the Treaty of Lunéville which assigned Giannutri to the Kingdom of Etruria in 1801, afterward to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany till the Italian unification in 1861. In 1806 a small military garrison was sent on the island. On 10 May 1809, a"
"to be known by historians by this point). Although, for a short time, it formed a part of the Kingdom of Croatia. In 1000 the island, together with the many other islands and cities of Dalmatia, submitted to the Republic of Venice. In 1358 the island came under the rule of King Louis the Great, the Angevin ruler of Hungary. During the Renaissance it was ruled by Venice from 1409 until the end of 18th century followed by a brief interlude under Napoleon. It was eventually annexed by the Habsburgs in 1815 and remained under Austrian rule till 1918. Since"
"in the west. The island was open to the public in July 2015. of the territory of the island's surrounding marine area became part of the Karaburun-Sazan Marine Park in 2010. The island was known as ""Sason"" () in antiquity and was already mentioned by Polybius in a military episode taking place in 215 BC. Part of the Roman and Byzantine empires, it was captured by the Anjou of Naples in 1279, and was held by Albanian lords in the 14th century, often under the protection of Venice. The Ottoman Turks captured it around 1400, but it belonged to the"
"limestone, the constructions are unique to the island. Because of its central position in the Mediterranean, Asinara was known and used by Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans. The Camaldolite monastery of Sant'Andrea and the Castellaccio on Punta Maestra, Fornelli, may date to the Middle Ages. The island was also an object of pirate raids by the Saracens. Later, ownership of Asinara was contested between Pisa, the Republic of Genoa, and the kingdom of Aragon. From the 17th century, shepherds from Sardinia and Liguria colonized the island. In 1721, it became property of the Savoy Kingdom of Sardinia. In 1885 the island"
"was conquered by the Normans. In 1806, it was occupied and sacked by the English, and later on by the French. Thereafter it shared the fate of the Kingdom of Naples—including the period of Spanish rule of which the 16th-century castle of Charles V, overlooking modern Crotone, serves as a reminder—and its successor, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which was conquered by the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1860 and incorporated into the new Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Crotone's location between the ports of Taranto and Messina, as well as its proximity to a source of hydroelectric power, favored"
"over by the Byzantine Empire. In 1331 the Republic of Venice took over and the island was ruled by a few Venetian aristocratic families. Starting in the early 14th century, regular outbreaks of plague and malaria decimated the local population, until the 17th century when the archipelago was de facto uninhabited. In the 19th century Austria-Hungary started fortifying the islands by building massive bastions and batteries, and two large forts on Mali Brijun and five smaller ones on Veliki Brijun had been constructed for the defence of the monarchy’s main naval base at Pula. In 1893 the whole archipelago, including"
"from then on the island changed several times of ownership and was populated only seasonally from farmers coming from Elba to cultivate. On 27 August 1802 Napoleon established that Elba, Capraia, Gorgona, Pianosa, Palmaiola and Montecristo were part of the French territory and in 1805 assigned to his sister Elisa Bonaparte the region of Piombino, Elba and Pianosa that was fortified. On April 9, 1809 the Archipelago returned to Tuscany, which was ruled by the French; on 10 May British marines and sailors from and HMS ""Halcyon"" landed on Pianosa and Gianuti. The landing parties destroyed the forts and captured"
"1843, when two warships arrived and landed 400 soldiers on the island. They substituted the British flags on the island with Neapolitan flags. A royal decree was read out proclaiming the island as part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. A few of the Maltese settlers remained on the island, while others returned to Malta or went to Tunisia. In the 1840s, the Tomasi family formally sold the island to the Kingdom of Naples. In 1861, the island became part of the Kingdom of Italy, but the new Italian government limited its activities there to building a penal colony."
"made Procida a royal game reserve. In this period the Procidan fleet reached its zenith, backed by a period of flourishing shipbuilding. The population rose to approximately 16,000. In 1799, Procida took part in the revolts that led to the proclamation of the Neapolitan Republic. With the return of the Bourbon dynasty a few months later 12 Procidans were beheaded. The Napoleonic Wars brought several episodes of devastation due to the island's strategic position in the naval engagements between French and English. In 1860, after the fall of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the island became part of the"
"to the Visigoths, the Byzantines, the Vandals, and the Arabs. In 1109 it was the target of a devastating attack by the Norwegian king Sigurd I at the head of the ""Norwegian Crusade"". The island was conquered by the Catalans, added to the Crown of Aragon and later became part of the medieval Kingdom of Majorca. From 1403 to the early 18th century the threat of barbary pirate attacks rendered the island uninhabitable. The island (along with its surrounding islets) became a separate insular council (with the same territory as the municipality of the same name) after 1977. Before that,"
"Ionian Islands The Ionian Islands (Modern Greek: , ; Ancient Greek, Katharevousa: , ; ) are a group of islands in Greece. They are traditionally called the Heptanese, i.e. ""the Seven Islands"" (, ""Heptanēsa"" or , ""Heptanēsos""; ), but the group includes many smaller islands as well as the seven principal ones. As a distinct historic region they date to the centuries-long Venetian rule, which preserved them from becoming part of the Ottoman Empire, and created a distinct cultural identity with many Italian influences. The Ionian Islands became part of the modern Greek state in 1864. Administratively today they belong"
"until they fell to the Roman Republic in 218 BC. The Romans were followed by the Byzantines in the 6th century AD, who were expelled by Aghlabids following a siege in 870 AD. Malta may have been sparsely populated for a few centuries until being repopulated by Arabs in the 11th century. The islands were conquered by the Norman Kingdom of Sicily in 1091, and a gradual Christianization of the islands followed. At this point, the islands were dominated by successive feudal rulers including the Swabians, the Aragonese and eventually the Spanish. The islands were given to the Order of"
"a fief of the Fieschi family until 1229, when it was acquired by the Republic of Genoa. In 1432 it was attacked by the fleet of Venice and in 1549, together by Rapallo, by that of Turgut. In 1813, under the Napoleonic domination, the two burghs of ""Pescino"" and ""Corte"" were unified as ""Porto Napoleone"". Two years later it was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia as the commune of Santa Margherita Ligure. In 1861 it became part of the newly unified Kingdom of Italy. Connected by rail in the 20th century, Santa Margherita became a renowned tourist resort after"
"as Parthenope or Παρθενόπη was established on the Island of Megaride, later refounded as Neápolis in the sixth century BC. The city was an important part of Magna Graecia, played a major role in the merging of Greek and Roman society and a significant cultural centre under the Romans. It served as the capital of the Duchy of Naples (661–1139), then of the Kingdom of Naples (1282–1816) and finally of the Two Sicilies until the unification of Italy in 1861. Between 1925 and 1936, Naples was expanded and upgraded by Benito Mussolini's government but subsequently sustained severe damage from Allied"
"revolts by the native population, the Venetians retained the island until 1669, when the Ottoman Empire took possession of it. In the partition of the Byzantine empire after the capture of Constantinople by the armies of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, Crete was eventually acquired by Venice, which held it for more than four centuries (the ""Kingdom of Candia""). The most important of the many rebellions that broke out during that period was the one known as the revolt of St. Titus. It occurred in 1363, when indigenous Cretans and Venetian settlers exasperated by the hard tax policy exercised by"
"the expedition of Giuseppe Garibaldi's ""Mille""; after the Dictatorship of Garibaldi the annexation was ratified by a popular plebiscite. The Kingdom of Sardinia became in 1861 the Kingdom of Italy, in the context of the Italian ""Risorgimento"". However, local elites across the island systematically opposed and nullified efforts of the national government to modernize the traditional economy and political system. For example, they frustrated government efforts to set up new town councils, new police forces, and a liberal judicial system. Furthermore, repeated revolts showed a degree of unrest among the peasants. In 1866, Palermo revolted against Italy. The city was"
"island, except for the city of Castelsardo (at that time called ""Casteldoria"" or ""Castelgenovese""), which had been stolen from the Doria in 1448. The subduing of Sardinia having taken a century, Corsica, which had never been wrestled from the Genoese, was dropped from the formal title of the Kingdom. During the 3rd century BC, the Allobroges settled down in the region between the Rhône and the Alps. This region, named Allobrigia and later ""Sapaudia"" in Latin, was integrated to the Roman Empire. In the 4th century, the region of Savoy was ceded by the Western Roman Empire to the Burgundians"
"several states, beginning the so-called ""Francocracy"" () period: Several islands, most notably Crete (1204–1669), Euboea (Negroponte, until 1470), and the Ionian Islands (until 1797) came under the rule of Venice. These states faced the attacks of the Byzantine Greek successor states of Nicaea and Epirus, as well as Bulgaria. Thessalonica and the Latin Empire were reconquered by the Byzantine Greeks by 1261. Descendants of the Crusaders continued to rule in Athens and the Peloponnesus (Morea) until the 15th century when the area was conquered by the Ottoman Empire. The emblem used on the seals of the rulers of Jerusalem during"
"Italian Islands of the Aegean The Italian Islands of the Aegean (; ) were a group of twelve major islands (the Dodecanese) in the southeastern Aegean Sea, which — together with the surrounding islets — were ruled by the Kingdom of Italy from 1912 to 1943 and the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. The Dodecanese, except Kastellorizo, were occupied by Italy during the Italo-Turkish War of 1912. Italy had agreed to return the islands to the Ottoman Empire according to the Treaty of Ouchy in 1912; however the vagueness of the text allowed a provisional Italian administration of"
"the lands remained under the control of the Carthusians until the 1770s when the order sold its lands to the Grand Duke of Tuscany (the future Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor) who turned the island into a fishing village and attempted to repopulate it. Following the unification of Italy in the mid-19th century, the island came under the control of the Kingdom of Italy which converted the former monastery lands into an experimental agricultural penal colony in 1869. Located across the Ligurian Sea from the Italian port city of Livorno, Gorgona island is considered ""impossible"" to escape from which has"
"these early settlers came over from the Aeolian Islands. In historic times, the island has been populated at least since about 1500 BC by Phoenician peoples. In ancient Greece, the Island was named ""Osteodes"" (ossuary) in memory of the thousands of Carthaginian mutineers left there to die of hunger in the 4th century BC. The Romans renamed the island ""Ustica"", Latin for ""burnt"", for its black rocks. The island is also known locally as the ""black pearl"". In the 6th century, a Benedictine community settled in the island, but was soon forced to move because of ongoing wars between Europeans"
"by the Ostrogoths, being ultimately absorbed into the Eastern Roman Empire. The Byzantines gave the island over to Naples in 588 and by 661 it was being administered by a Count liege to the Duke of Naples. The area was devastated by the Saracens in 813 and 847; in 1004 it was occupied by Henry II of Germany; the Norman Roger II of Sicily took it in 1130 granting the island to the Norman Aldoyn de Candida created Count d’Ischia; the island was raided by the Pisans in 1135 and 1137 and subsequently fell under the Hohenstaufen and then Angevin"
"and its successor, the Byzantine Empire, before passing to the Republic of Venice. As a result of the War of Chioggia (1381) between Genoa and Venice the entire population was evacuated and the town was demolished. The Ottoman Empire established control over the deserted island in 1455. During Ottoman rule, it was resettled by both Greeks and Turks. In 1807, the island was temporarily occupied by the Russians. During this invasion the town was burnt down and many Turkish residents left the island. Under Greek administration between 1912 and 1923, Tenedos was ceded according to the Treaty of Lausanne to"
"Graham Island. The King of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinand II, after whom Sicilians named the island Ferdinandea, sent ships to the nascent island to claim it for the Bourbon crown. The French Navy also made a landing, and called the island Julia. Spain also declared its territorial ambitions. Each wanted the island for its useful position in the Mediterranean trade route (to England and France) and its close position to Spain and Italy. In August 1831, the volcano had risen to above sea level, although still only a couple of rocks, but the Royal Navy thought it was very suitable"
"partial Roman occupation since the 1st century A.D., and this for four centuries. From 450 onwards, the Saxons, the Angles and the Jutes, who came from the continent, settled in the south and east. Germanic dialects prevailed in these regions, supplanting Celtic dialects, which remained in the west and north of the island (Wales, Cornwall, Scotland) and Ireland. In the eighth century, Vikings from Scandinavia settled on the island. Their languages, also Germanic, in turn influenced the languages already present on the island. Thus, at the dawn of 11th century, the country was made up of a series of peoples"
"to move to European countries, especially Germany. Among others, the Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta is descended from such immigrants. In 1941 Italian forces occupied the island. In the mountainous regions of the island, native rebels fought a quite effective guerrilla war, but the occupiers answered harshly with arrests and executions. After the Italian capitulation in 1943, German troops occupied the island on January 12 and 13 of 1944, but in July they were defeated and the island was freed. As part of Croatia it became part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, until Croatia gained its independence in 1991,"
"15th century it was a fief of families such as the Fieschi, Spinola, Adorno, and Doria. In 1815 it became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia and, from 1861, of the unified Kingdom of Italy. In the late 19th century, first British, then other Northern European aristocratic tourists began to visit Portofino, which they reached by horse and cart from Santa Margherita Ligure. Aubrey Herbert and Elizabeth von Arnim were amongst the more famous English people to make the area fashionable. Eventually, more expatriates built expensive vacation houses, and by 1950 tourism had replaced fishing as the town's chief industry,"
"inhabited until after 8000 BC. Great Britain became an island by 5600 BC. Hiberni (Ireland), Pictish (northern Britain) and Britons (southern Britain) tribes, all speaking Insular Celtic, inhabited the islands at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. Much of Brittonic-occupied Britain was conquered by the Roman Empire from AD 43. The first Anglo-Saxons arrived as Roman power waned in the 5th century, and eventually dominated the bulk of what is now England. Viking invasions began in the 9th century, followed by more permanent settlements and political change, particularly in England. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 and the"
"called by ancient Greeks Pollariae or Pullariae (Πολλάριαι), and later, they were called Brionian. The Brijuni Islands had some Ancient Roman settlements, but up to the late 19th century the islands were mainly used for their quarries, which have been worked on for centuries. The islands belonged to Venice from the Middle Ages, and stone from the islands was used to build the palaces and bridges of the city. The islands were part of the Illyrian Provinces after Napoleon's brief annexation. In 1815 the islands became part of the Austrian Empire, which later became Austria-Hungary. During this period the islands'"
"of Sicily together as one state - the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. For the period prior to 1816, instead, historians refer to them separately with their own name, as they were separate kingdoms. Between 1816 and 1848, the island of Sicily experienced three popular revolts against Bourbon rule, including the revolution of independence of 1848, when the island was fully independent of Bourbon control for 16 months. In 1860, Sicily was invaded by a corps of volunteers, led by Giuseppe Garibaldi from the Kingdom of Sardinia. They successfully conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and incorporated the territory"
"also home to a vegetable garden and olive tree grove where olive oil is produced, as well as livestock facilities which high quality cheese, chicken and pork is produced. The island is named after the Gorgons of Greek mythology which were three sisters, Medusa, Stheno and Euryale, who had hair made of venomous snakes that could turn any observer into stone. Since the 4th century AD, Gorgona has been home to various monastic orders including the Benedictines until it finally came under the influence of the Carthusians in the 14th century. Eventually the Gorgona Abbey was abandoned in 1425 though"
"Venetians by 1696. From then on, it follows the fate of the Ionian Islands, which were eventually given to Britain in 1815 as an autonomous republic under British protection. In 1864 the island was ceded to Greece with the rest of the Ionian Islands as part of Diapontia Islands, but not occupied, coming under ""de facto"" Ottoman control. It was not until the First Balkan War in 1912 that Greece landed soldiers on the island and formally claimed it. After the end of the Second Balkan War in 1913, Italy and Austria-Hungary pressed Greece to evacuate the southern part of"