< Tourist Information

An ancient story

First men have settled on the islands of Lipari and Salina few centuries before 4000 BC attracted by the extraordinary resource of that time, the obsidian, a black glass erupted from the mountain Pelato, the volcano in the NE of Lipari.
This volcano had shut down recently, after a period of intense activity to which is due the appearance of the pumice today industrially exploited. When the man still did not know the metalworking, obsidian (found only in a few points of the Mediterranean) was the most cutting edge material that you could find and that is why was so important. It was exported in large quantities from Lipari to Sicily, Italy and southern Europe, but it also reached the coasts of Liguria, Provence, Dalmatian.
This trade brought an extraordinary prosperity to the island. It then developed a town, one of the most extensive and populous known in that age. Just after a thousand years later, around 3000 BC, when the trade of the obsidian was at its peak, the smaller islands of the Aeolian archipelago began to be inhabited. In that long period, which lasted more than a millennium and a half, to the first people from Sicily, that settled on fertile highlands that well provided agriculture and pasture, replaced others who came from afar, (supposedly from the transadriatic coasts) to seize this unique source of wealth. These new people settled on a real natural fortress, dominating the best landings of the island of Lipari, which is the Castle and only during peaceful periods the main town could move in the plain below, where the modern city was found.
The long evolution of civilization of these people could be recognized with great attention, in its different phases, through the archaeological excavations that took place starting in 1948.
After a few centuries of strong economic and demographic recession (second half of the third millennium BC) Aeolian islands had another period of luxuriant bloom when they were settled by new people coming this time from continental Greece. We can recognize in them the Eoli whose islands still take the name after four millennia. To the Eoli refer the oldest legends whose Greek civilization has preserved memory. This cycle of legends finds an echo in the Homer’s Odyssey, in the episode of Aeolus, the fair and hospitable king, who lives on the island surrounded by an impregnable wall of bronze (the Castle of Lipari?), that welcomes the wandering Ulysses and gives him the leather bag containing all the winds which was supposed to facilitate his return home.
Then rise (shortly after 2000 BC), on all the islands, a large and populous settlements of huts of a totally new kind, rounded, surrounded by a well constructed wall of stone and mud. It begins with them the Bronze Age in our western countries. Testimonials of the settlements of these people were found in almost all the islands except for Vulcano which was uninhabitable for the intense activity of its crater. Particularly extensive and important the one of  Cape Graziano of Filicudi and of the Castle Lipari.
The culture of Cape Graziano takes place throughout the first half of the second millennium BC.
At the populations of Aeolic origin replaced around 1430 BC new people coming instead from the nearby coast of Sicily, bringing a whole new culture, which takes its name from the large village of Cape Milazzese on the island of Panarea.
Around 1270 BC on the Aeolian islands (or better throughout Lipari, because the others are from now deserted) settled the Ausoni, people coming off the coasts of Campania, which are also mentioned in ancient legends. At Ausonio I replaces the Ausonio II, corresponding to another period of great prosperity, which leaves deep signs on the Castle of Lipari. The Ausonio II lasts just over two centuries.
Around 900 BC the florid settlement of Lipari is radically destroyed and for more than three centuries the Castle, but perhaps the entire island remains desert.
In the second half of the eighth century BC begins the phenomenon of the Greek colonization of southern Italy and Sicily, Lipari is so far, one of the last colonies.
During the 50° Summer Olympics (580-576 BC) Lipari was colonized by a group of Greeks of Doric race, the Cnidus and the Rhodes, commanded by Pentatlo, they were survivors of an unfortunate attempt to establish a colony on the site of Marsala. The new settlers had the primarily need to defend themselves from the raids of the Etruscan (Tirreni). So they had to set a powerful fleet, which gave them great victories, ensuring the supremacy of the sea. With the loot they won, they erected a sanctuary to Apollo in Delphi, splendid votive monuments (a complex of over forty bronze statues), which bases remain testimonies.
The ships of Liparesi dominated the Tyrrhenian and in 393 BC they intercepted a Roman ship carrying to Delphi a large gold vase representing the tenth part of the spoils of Veio’s conquest. But their supreme magistrate Timasiteo made them  return it, as a sacred offering to the god Apollo, that the Liparesi venerated. In 427 BC, during the first Athenian expedition to Sicily, under Lache, the Liparesi tightened an alliance with the Siracusans, perhaps because of their common Doric origin. They suffered attacks, as Thucydides says, by the Athenian and Reggina  fleet, but without serious consequences. During the Carthaginian shipment of 408-406 Lipari was again in friendly relations with Syracuse. It was therefore attacked by the Carthaginian general Imilcone that seizing the city, extorted a compensation to the inhabitants of 30 talents. Left the Carthaginians, Lipari returned to the full enjoyment of its independence.
During the domination of Dionysius the Elder, Lipari remained alongside of Syracuse and, subsequently, of Tindari. In 304 the island was attacked by Agatocle that imposed a tax of 50 talents, lost during the crossing to Sicily for a storm attributed to the anger of Aeolus.
Later Lipari fell under the Carthaginian’s yoke, during the first Punic War. For its excellent ports and for its location of high strategic value, the archipelago became one of the best naval Carthaginian stations. In 262 the Roman consul Cornelius Scipio, with the illusion that he could easily appropriate of Lipari, was blocked by Hannibal and caught with his entire team. In 258 Atilio Calatinus besieged the island of Lipari. In 257 the waters of the Aeolian islands were the scene of a fierce battle between the Carthaginian and the Roman fleet. Lipari was conquered by the Romans in 252 BC destroyed with "inhuman carnage” and with the loss of independence they also lost the economic prosperity. He started for the island a period of serious decline.
It continued anyway to benefit of the considerable economic advantage of the industry of the alum, which was probably from the early Bronze age extracted in the island of Vulcano and of which Lipari had in the ancient world the monopoly. Very popular were also the excellent thermal waters of Vulcano and Lipari, which had a considerable reputation in the imperial Rome. Cicero writes of Lipari and speaks of the abuse that the island suffered from Verre.
The Aeolian Islands were of great strategic importance during the civil war between Octavian and Sesto Pompey. Lipari, fortified by Sixth Pompey, was conquered in 36 BC by Agrippa, the admiral of Ottaviano, who chose the island of Vulcano to be the basis of his fleet for the operations that preceded the naval battle of Milazzo and the subsequent landing to Sicily. Lipari suffered on this occasion new devastations and new disasters. It seems that after it could enjoy of the juridical state of municipium. Pliny defined it “oppidum civium romanorum”.
We don’t have reports of Lipari during the imperial Roman times(I-IV century AD). We only know that the Emperor Caracalla, after killing his stepfather Plautianus confined there Plautilla his wife and his brother-in-law Plauzio who died in exile.
During the Christian time (perhaps from the fourth century) Lipari was an Episcopalian centre and at least since the sixth century were venerated in his cathedral the relics of the St. Bartholomew which, according to the traditions left us by Byzantine writers, they had miraculously arrived there from Armenia.
In the Middle Ages Lipari was the destination of pilgrims, which arrived there from near and far countries. Around the Aeolian islands, particularly Lipari and Vulcano, rose, in the Middle Ages, rich and colourful traditions. The crater of Vulcano was then considered as the mouth of hell, where the souls of burnt sinners were thrown. It is known the legend told from San Gregorio Magno that says that the same day of the death of Theodoric the soul of the gothic King was seen thrown into the crater by the Pope John and the patrician  Symmachus, that he made kill.
Other legends flourished around the holy bishop Agatho and the hermit San Calogero that freed the island from devils and made flow healthy waters, that take his name.
In the Middle Ages there was a sudden awakening (after many decades of dormancy) of the volcanic island of Lipari. It then opened the new crater of Mount Pelato, which erupted immense masses of pumice, and the closest to the city, Pirrera, which erupted a flow of obsidian.
In 839 Lipari was attacked and destroyed by an incursion of Muslims who massacred and deported in slavery the population and profaned the relics of St. Bartholomew. These were devoutly collected by some old monks escaped to the slaughter and the following year they were transported to Salerno and from there to Benevento. Lipari remained for a few centuries almost totally deserted, until the conquest of Sicily by the Normans, who in 1083 settled in Lipari the abbot Ambrose with a group of Benedictine monks. Around the monastery, which still remains next to the cathedral, returned to form a town.
In 1131 it was reconstituted the Episcopalian centre of Lipari united to that of Patti. Roberto I King of Naples, in 1340, seized the island of Lipari. In 1544 the city was sacked by the fierce pirate Ariadeno Barbarossa, who took away with him as slaves the unfortunate people. Lipari was subsequently rebuilt and repopulated by Charles V and then followed the fortunes of Sicily and of the realm of Naples.