Portoferraio is the main port of the island of Elba. Its historic center is still with picturesque houses and flowering balconies, narrow streets and squares pans. The city is filled with palaces and monuments to visit, theCity Medicea with the strongholds of attack, the Fort Falcone, the Fort Stella and the tower of Linguella in which to you can admire the ruins of a Roman villa and the Archaeological Museum. Portoferraio, built on an ancient Fabricia of Roman origin, has in its territory numerous beaches among which Le Ghiaie, La Biodola, Magazzini and Bagnaia .
Portoferraio was founded by the will of Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, from which the city took the first name, “Cosmopoli”, in 1548, conceived as a military garrison in order to defend the coasts of the Grand and the island of Elba.
The city was to little more than a set of fortifications (yet still be visited and well-preserved), as the three Strengths: Strong Star, Forte Falcone and Linguella (English while Forte was built later to reinforce the town by with a view dell’assedio British fleet) and the beautiful walls, whose remains are still in good condition and made habitable, surrounding the historic centre of Portoferraio.
He remained under the control of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany until the eighteenth century when the island for its strategic position, was in the middle of a war between France, Austria and England. In 1814 the island was entrusted to Napoleon Bonaparte as the seat of his first exile. Napoleon chose as the capital of Portoferraio, in the city are still present and visited the two houses that were his residence.
It was thanks to the reign of French, albeit short (1814-1815), which Portoferraio grew in importance and modernity in exponentially, as the whole island of rest, thanks to create infrastructure and exploitation of iron mines of Rio Marina . During this period Portoferraio became the port used for the transport of iron mines from the island continent, and hence the current name.
Subsequently Portoferraio returned under the dominion of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany until the unit of Italy in 1860.
Portoferraio experienced a period economically stable, as the whole island, thanks to the iron mines until the early’70s, when the iron industry came into crisis. Readily mines were dismantled (the last was closed in 1981), but Portoferraio, thanks to the beauty of its beaches, knew how to recycle in the tourism industry, which still represents the main source of wealth.
