The island of Giglio has been inhabited since prehistoric times: traces of a Neolithic settlement (VII millennium BC) have been identified in the northern part of the island (loc. Secchete), while a large settlement of the Middle Bronze Age was the subject of excavations at Castellare di Campese, a hill that dominates the only natural harbor on the west coast of the island; also in the Campese area, during the mining activities carried out in the 1950s, a storage room of bronze objects datable to the Late Bronze Age (10th century BC) was found, now in the Archaeological Museum of Grosseto.

It was also frequented by the Etruscans, as evidenced by materials recovered always at Castellare di Campese and the shipwreck of the sixth century explored off the same beach, whose materials are now on display in the Porto Santo Stefano Fortress. Even more substantial are the traces of the Roman period, the age to which the first mention in the sources also dates back: in De bello civil Julius Caesar tells that Domitius, an ally of Pompey, in 49 BC. to help Marseille, which had rebelled against Caesar, he requisitioned several private ships between the island of Giglio and the Cosana coast. In fact, this territory, like the nearby Monte Argentario, was owned by the Domizi Enobarbi, to whom the villa whose remains are still visible in Giglio Porto is probably attributed.

To find other information on the island in the sources, it is necessary to get to the fifth century AD, or the poem De Reditu Suo (415 AD) by Rutilio Namaziano, in which the Latin author recalls how it had offered refuge to many Romans fleeing invasions of the Goths. Its current name derives from the Latin one: Igilium, a term that however does not refer to the flower, as you might think, but rather to the Greek term igilion which means little goat, therefore the lily for the Romans was “the island of goats”.

In the Middle Ages it was owned by the Abbey of SS. Vincenzo and Anastasio, known as “delle Tre Fontane” to which, according to tradition, it was donated by Charlemagne in 805, together with the ancient Ager Cosanus (Orbetello, Monte Argentario, Ansedonia and their hinterland). The monks then ceded it in emphyteusis first to the Aldobrandeschi counts and then to the Orsini, their heirs with the extinction of the family, even if in reality the island was in fact controlled by the Republic of Pisa which in the 13th century, before being defeated by Genoa in the battle of Meloria (1284), was one of the greatest powers in the Tyrrhenian Sea. So in 1406, when Florence definitively defeated Pisa by annexing all its possessions, it became part of the Florentine state.

In 1447 it was occupied, like many other castles in the Maremma, by King Alfonso of Aragon, who held it until 1460; immediately after Pope Pius II, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, managed to reach an agreement with the Republic of Siena and the Abbey of the Tre Fontane, giving life to a fiefdom formed by the island of Giglio, Castiglione della Pescaia and the Rocchette di Pian d’Alma, which he entrusted to his nephew Andrea Piccolomini.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are the most difficult and tormented period in the history of the island, exposed to continuous raids by Barbary pirates. The most terrible event is linked to an incursion by the famous pirate Khair ad-Din, known as Barbarossa, who in 1544 sacked Giglio Castello deporting almost all its inhabitants as slaves, so much so that the Piccolomini family, a few years later, was forced to send some families from Pienza to the island in an attempt to repopulate it.

Finally, in 1588, the last heir of the lordship, Silvia Piccolomini, sold all her fiefs in Maremma to Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo de’Medici, so that upon her death they became part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

The Medici made a certain effort in attempting to fortify and protect this domain, located on the southernmost borders of their state and constantly exposed to pirate raids; consider that the last one took place, now in the Lorraine period, on November 18, 1799; on that date 2,000 pirates from Tunis landed at Campese with the intention of storming the Castle. The inhabitants, however, opposed a fierce resistance, forcing the attackers to retreat after having plundered only the church of San Rocco. The period of tranquility that followed this last incursion favored the demographic development of the island, where numerous Ligurian and Neapolitan families moved, giving rise to the center of Giglio Porto. Even the Napoleonic period did not cause upheavals, which it went through unscathed, thanks also to its isolation, then following the fate of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany until its annexation to the Kingdom of Italy in 1860.

A certain development of the island’s economy occurred in the 1900s with the exploitation of a pyrite and alum mine in the Campese area, already identified in the mid-19th century, active between 1938 and 1962, which in times of maximum activity, it came to employ about 300 miners and workers. Today the economy of the Giglio Island is essentially based on tourism; it is inhabited by about 1,400 people divided between the centers of Giglio Castello, Giglio Porto and Campese.