Montecristo: Island of Nature, Stories, and Empires

This island is more than just the location in Alexandre Dumas’s famous book, “The Count of Monte Cristo.”
Montecristo: Island of Nature, Stories, and Empires
The ruins of a monastery on a hill of the Italian island of Montecristo, July 8, 2004. Patrick Hertzog/AFP via Getty Images
Oliver Mantyk
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“Monte Cristo, do not forget Monte Cristo!” were the last words of the dying priest to the wrongfully imprisoned Edmond Dantes in Alexandre Dumas’s famous work The Count of Monte Cristo.

Like much of the setting and cultural references in the classic novel, Dumas’s pivotal island was real and continues perhaps as elusive now as it was then to the imprisoned Dantes and his companion Abbe Faria.