Prior to 1800 Historically, Lampedusa was a landing place and a maritime base for the ancient
Phoenicians,
Greeks and
Romans. The 4th-century BC Greek manuscript, the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax, mentions that there were two or three towers on the island. directed by the
Aghlabids, the island was sacked by
Saracens during the
Arab–Byzantine wars. By the end of the medieval period, the island had become a dependency of the
Kingdom of Sicily. In 1553,
Barbary pirates from North Africa under the command of the
Ottoman Empire raided Lampedusa and carried off 1,000 captives into
slavery. As a result of pirate attacks, the island became uninhabited. In 1565, Don
García de Toledo made a brief stop at Lampedusa while leading a relief force to break the
Great Siege of Malta. In subsequent centuries, the
Hospitaller fleet which was based in Malta sometimes used Lampedusa's harbour as a shelter from bad weather or from corsairs. At this point, Greek privateers deposited provisions and took refuge at Lampedusa while being pursued by Tunisian vessels.
Mussolini had given the garrison his permission to surrender because it lacked any water. The Governor's formal surrender was accepted in the island's underground command-post by a combined Army/Navy delegation sometime before 9:00 pm on 12 June 1943. During this process, the governor handed his sword to the Coldstream company commander, Major Bill Harris. A second unofficial claim has also been made regarding the capitulation of the island, when earlier that same day elements of the garrison had also attempted to surrender in unusual circumstances when Sergeant Sydney Cohen, the pilot of a
Royal Air Force Fairey Swordfish aircraft landed having run low on fuel and suffering problems with his compass. Cohen's exploits were commemorated in a
Yiddish play
The King of Lampedusa that ran for six months. The first telephone connection with Sicily was installed only in the 1960s. In the same decade an electric power station was built. In 1972, part of the western side of the island became a
United States Coast Guard LORAN-C transmitter station. In 1979, Lt. Kay Hartzell took command of the Coast Guard base, becoming "the first female commanding officer of an isolated duty station". The 1980s, and especially 1985–1986, saw an increase in tensions and the area around the island was the scene of multiple attacks. On 15 April 1986, Libya fired two
Scuds at the Lampedusa navigation station, in retaliation for the
American bombing of
Tripoli and
Benghazi, and the alleged death of
Colonel Gaddafi's adopted daughter. However, the missiles passed over the island, landed in the sea, and caused no damage. On
4 January 1989, U.S. Navy aircraft from the carrier
USS John F. Kennedy shot down two Libyan fighters approximately from the island. The NATO base was decommissioned in 1994 and transferred to Italian military control.
21st century and North African immigration Since the early 2000s, Lampedusa, the European territory closest to Libya, has become a prime transit point for migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Asia wanting to enter Europe. In 2004 the Libyan and Italian governments reached a secret agreement that obliged Libya to accept African immigrants
deported from Italian territories. This resulted in the mass repatriation of many people from Lampedusa to Libya between 2004 and 2005, a move criticised by the
European Parliament. By 2006, many African immigrants were paying
people smugglers in Libya to help get them to Lampedusa by boat. On arrival, most were then transferred by the Italian government to reception centres in mainland Italy. Many were then released because their deportation orders were not enforced. and the
Mediterranean on their way to Europe In 2009, the overcrowded conditions at the island's temporary immigrant reception centre came under criticism by the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The unit, which was originally built for a maximum capacity of 850 people, was reported to be housing nearly 2,000
boat people. A significant number of people were sleeping outdoors under plastic sheeting. A fire that started during an inmate riot destroyed a large portion of the holding facility on 19 February 2009. In 2011, many more immigrants moved to Lampedusa during the rebellions in
Tunisia and
Libya. By May 2011, more than 35,000 immigrants had arrived on the island from Tunisia and Libya. By the end of August, 48,000 had arrived. Most were young males in their 20s and 30s. The situation has caused division within the EU, the French government regarding most of the arrivals as economic migrants rather than refugees in fear of persecution. In July 2013,
Pope Francis visited the island on his first official visit outside of Rome. He prayed for migrants, living and dead, and denounced their traffickers. In October 2013, the
2013 Lampedusa disaster occurred; a boat carrying more than 500 migrants, mostly from
Eritrea and
Somalia, sank off the coast of Lampedusa with the deaths of at least 300 people. From January to April 2015, about 1,600 migrants died on the route from Libya to Lampedusa, making it the deadliest migrant route in the world. The 2017 Oscar-nominated Italian documentary film
Fire at Sea documented a part of this migrant crisis and was filmed entirely on the island in 2014 and 2015. The film also won the
Golden Bear at the 66th
Berlin Film Festival. In September 2023, more than 120 boats, carrying roughly 7,000 migrants—more than the total population of Lampedusa—arrived on the island within the span of 24 hours. Some of the migrants were relocated to Germany. According to the
Irish Examiner, the majority of the September 2023 migrants arrived from
Tunisia and were "young men or unaccompanied minors." Reasons for migration varied, but the
Irish Examiner listed a worsening of the "socioeconomic situation in Tunisia" and fleeing danger or persecution. The year 2024 brought a total of 45,997 migrants to Lampedusa on 1,095 different boats. 43,580 people have arrived in Italy since the beginning of 2025. ==Geography==