page_title: Asinara
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Asinara / History / Early history
caption_attribution_description: Cala d'Oliva - Landscape
context_page_description: Asinara is an Italian island of 52 km² in area. The name is Italian for "donkey-inhabited", but it is thought to derive from the Latin "sinuaria", and meaning sinus-shaped. The island is virtually uninhabited. The census of population of 2001 lists one man. The island is located off the north-western tip of Sardinia, and is mountainous in geography with steep, rocky coasts. Because fresh water is scarce, trees are sparse and low scrub is the predominant vegetation. Part of the national parks system of Italy, the island was recently converted to a wildlife and marine preserve. It is home to a population of wild Albino donkeys from which the island may take its name.
context_section_description: Human habitation on the island dates back to the Neolithic Age, with Domus de Janas (sprites' houses) near Campu Perdu.  Carved into soft 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 became state property; a lazaretto, the Primario Lazzaretto del Regno d'Italia, was built at Cala Reale and an agricultural penal colony was established at Cala d'Oliva, by order of King Umberto I of Italy. About 100 families of Sardinian farmers and Genoese fishermen who lived on Asinara were obliged to move to Sardinia, where they founded the village of Stintino.
  During the First World War, the island was used as a prison camp for some 24,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers, 5,000 of whom died during their imprisonment. It was used as a place of detention for Ethiopian POWs during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Majority of the Ethiopians kept there were members of the Ethiopian nobility.
  In the 1970s the prison facilities were refurbished as a maximum security prison. In past years was assigned mainly to detention of mafia members and terrorists, and has housed the likes of such as the mafia boss Totò Riina. Prisoners and warders were the only inhabitants of Asinara for about 110 years, until the closure of the prison in December 1997.
  Construction on the island has been forbidden for the last century.
caption: Cala d'Oliva, first village at the time of the prison.
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