The Medici in Elba and Cosmopoli

Under the Medici, Portoferraio was fortified and became a strategic Mediterranean port

In the first months of 1548 Cosimo I de' Medici was given the task by Charles V to defend Elba (and thus the commercial traffic of the Tyrrhenian Sea) and to refound the city of Ferraja. In May of the same year, the architect Bellucci, later assisted by Camerini, began to [page id="970"]fortify the city of Cosimo, which he named "Cosmopoli, city of the kosmos: "the cradle of civilization and culture, an example of balance and rationality".

The bay of Portoferraio, which in its natural formation, with two rocky promontories towering over the sea and a strip of land that spirals around the harbor, was already extremely suitable for defense, was transformed into a impregnable fortress and secure naval base: on the higher parts of the Portoferraio promontory, Forte Stella and Forte Falcone were immediately erected, and in the strip of land surrounding the harbor, the Forte della Linguella, all connected by a bastioned city wall.

Later, the entire town of Cosmopoli found itself surrounded by walls and bastions, which, on the land side, were skillfully designed by the architect Bernardo Buontalenti. In 1600, the moat that would separate Portoferraio from the rest of the island would transform the fortified town, according to Admiral Nelson, into "an entirely impregnable island".

Cosmopoli and its defensive structure were immediately put to the test in 1555, when the pirate Dragut, after conquering Capoliveri, Rio, San Piero, Sant'Ilario, and Pomonte, left the island heading towards Corsica without ever managing to conquer Portoferraio.

Curiosity: To defend the Mediterranean and further counteract Turkish piracy, Cosimo I established, modeled after the Order of the Knights of Malta, the Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen and with it, built the San Salvatore convent (now the De Laugier Barracks), their headquarters, and the Galezze Arsenal for the maintenance of their fleet.

In 1557, the Treaty of London restored the power of the Appiani, and Cosimo retained, as a fief within the Piombino principality, only the city he had built with a territory of about two miles around the peninsula.

With the end of the Medici dynasty, Cosmopoli, like the entire Grand Duchy, passed to the Lorena family and later to the French, and after more than two centuries, Portoferraio became part of the plans of one of the greatest strategists in history: Napoleon Bonaparte.