Italy specialises in small countries – two of the three smallest in Europe, Vatican and San Marino, lie landlocked within its borders. A third, Monaco, lies just over the border on France’s Cote D’Azur. But we’d almost bet you’ve never heard of Tavolara, a small kingdom left behind by history – it’s the monarchy they forgot to abolish.
Look at a map of Sardinia and go to the north-east corner, around the Costa Smeralda area. You’ll see two small islands, Isola Molara and Isola Tavolara (there’s a third, Molarotto, but it’s little more than a speck in the Tyrrhenian). You’ll pass by the larger, more northerly, Tavolara as you come in on the ferry from the Tuscan mainland.
The story starts in 1833, when King Charles Albert of Sardinia visited the island (this is pre-Unification and Sardinia is still an independent sovereign state at this point). The remarkably relaxed monarch acknowledges Giuseppe Bertoleoni as the king of the independent Tavolara. Giuseppe is succeeded by his son Paolo I and then the island becomes a republic on his death in 1886. A brief interregnum for the monarchy is reestablished in 1895. The house of Bertoleoni has ruled unbroken ever since.
The present monarch is also the owner of the only restaurant on the island (Tavolara is not a big place). King Carlo II is otherwise known as Italian national Tonino Bertoleoni. Foreign affairs are handled from mainland La Spezia by Prince Ernesto Geremia di Tavolara.
If this all sounds a little Ruritanian, then it has to be admitted that Carlo doesn’t have much of a domain. This limestone massif, just 5km long and 1km wide has just a handful of families, a cemetery, and the restaurant opens summers only. Most of the people were removed in 1962 when NATO set up a radar station on the eastern side of the island (which is now out of bounds to all but NATO personnel. Curiously, the island’s population of sheep was removed at the same time – a starting point for conspiracy theorists perhaps? Now the waters around are popular with scuba divers and the area, untouched largely by man, is the Tavolara and Punta Coda Cavallo Marine Preserve, which was created in 1997. King Carlo will have to wait a while yet to exploit Tavolara’s tourist potential.
The nearest truly inhabited points to Tavolara areon the Sardinian mainland – Olbia and the fishing port of Porto San Paolo.
