ISLAND SPECIAL - Stuck on Elba

When Napoleon was exiled to Elba in 1814 he fled after less than a year. However, most visitors to this tranquil Italian island would rather be holed up there forever, says Cindy-Lou Dale

Elba, Italy

HERE man discovers the scent of colours, a new rhythm of life, where time and space belong to your passions," Carlo Eugeni told me in the port of Marciana Marina on Elba's northwest coast.

It was my first trip to the island and the old Elban restaurant owner had grabbed my arm as I was about to depart on a boat for the Italian mainland. "I visited Elba as a young man and I've never left. Your eyes tell me that you too will return," he insisted with gravitas.

His words turned out to be true because, unlike Napoleon Bonaparte Elba's best-known resident, who escaped after almost 10 months of enforced exile I returned to Elba time and again just as Carlos had predicted.

The Napoleon connection is all that most non-Italians know about Elba, a mountainous island located midway between Corsica and the Italian coast. But all this is rapidly changing, thanks to numerous Ryanair flights to Pisa, where it's a short hop across to the island from the nearby town of Piombino.

Elba is beautiful, so beautiful in fact that it is almost unreal. All your images of traditional age-old history and culture come to life here, from the leather-skinned fishermen snatching a living from the waves to the ancient village squares leading off into echoing alleyways, where washing hangs like banners between balconies, shopkeepers gossip in doorways and children play.

Everywhere there is the scent of lemon, honeysuckle and pine. Life has a stately lack of haste here, a different dimension. And it has provided a refuge for many celebrity island dwellers, like Simply Red's Mick Hucknall, Dutch football legend Marco Van Basten and best-selling author Giorgio Faletti.

Elba, Italy

Now part of a protected national park, the landscape of the 224km2 island jumps from over 50 biscuit-coloured beaches on 147km2 of coastline to jagged mountains, like Monte Capanne at 1,018m above sea level. Drive the length and breadth of Elba on switchback roads in an old Fiat, of course and you will find yourself on the very edge of a deep gorge where virtually inaccessible hamlets are located, or at the entrance to a deserted mine still guarding precious treasure buried deep within the earth.

Pages: