Porto Azzurro
Porto Azzurro was renamed in 1947 when it was allowed to change from its old name, Porto Longone, which identified it with the prison housed in the Longone Fortress. The small town opens onto the Gulf of Mola, the widest bay of the eastern Elba coast and has a well protected port in which ferry-boats and tourist boats regularly moor. This fishing and agricultural village is today a famous tourist resort.
Just a few kilometers from Porto Azzurro is "The Small Mine" (Piccola Miniera), a reconstruction in reduced scale of a mine and of the life inside a mine.
Places of historical and cultural interest also are: the Sanctuary of Madonna del Monserrato and the Spanish Church of Cuore Immacolato di Maria.
Barbarossa and Mola are two important hamlets.
Longone Fortress
Also called San Giacomo Fortress, the Longone Fortress was built by the Spanish architect Garcia da Toledo and commissioned by Philip III of Spain in 1603. The structure has a star plan and took inspiration from the fortress of the citadel of Antwerp.
Sanctuary of Madonna di Monserrato
Situated on an isolated hill at 1 kilometer from Porto Azzurro, the Sanctuary was commissioned by the Spanish Governor Pons y Léon in 1606 to worship the Black Madonna venerated in the Monastery of Montserrat in Spain.
The Small Mine
A little more than a kilometer along the Provincial Road for Rio Marina, there is the tiny village of Pianetto, where you can visit the small scale reconstruction of a real mine.
In a miniature train, the tourist is taken inside a reinforced tunnel 250 meters long in which is displayed the various phases of mining work, from the extraction of the minerals to the products represented by the large variety of minerals exhibited here.
The beaches
Barbarossa, Reale, La Rossa (sand), Terranera (shingle), La Pianotta (sand and rocks).
