The Prince of Lampedusa was a minor title in the
Sicilian nobility The Sicilian nobility was a privileged hereditary class in the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Kingdom of Italy, whose origins may be traced to the 11th century AD.
History
The Romans, Byzantines and Saracens exported ...
.
The first prince of
Lampedusa
Lampedusa ( , , ; scn, Lampidusa ; grc, Λοπαδοῦσσα and Λοπαδοῦσα and Λοπαδυῦσσα, Lopadoûssa; mt, Lampeduża) is the largest island of the Italian Pelagie Islands in the Mediterranean Sea.
The ''comune'' of L ...
and
Linosa was Don Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, who received the title from
Charles II of Spain in 1630. In the 1840s, the Tomasi family sold the island to the
Kingdom of Naples
The Kingdom of Naples ( la, Regnum Neapolitanum; it, Regno di Napoli; nap, Regno 'e Napule), also known as the Kingdom of Sicily, was a state that ruled the part of the Italian Peninsula south of the Papal States between 1282 and 1816. It was ...
.
The famous Italian novelist
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was the last in the line and he had long contemplated writing a historical novel based on the life of his great-grandfather, Don Giulio. When the Palazzo Lampedusa in
Palermo
Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital (political), capital of both the autonomous area, autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan ...
was badly damaged during the
Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Tomasi sank into a lengthy depression and began to write ''
Il Gattopardo
''The Leopard'' ( it, Il Gattopardo ) is a novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the ''Risorgimento''. Published posthumously in 1958 by Feltrinelli, after two rejections by the ...
'' as a way to combat it.
References
{{reflist
Lampedusa e Linosa
Sicilian noble families
Tomasi di Lampedusa family