Aeolian Islands

The history of the Aeolian Islands is practically identified with that of Lipari. The first men came there in the middle Neolithic (from the beginning of the fourth millennium BC) coming from Sicily, aboard rudimentary and fragile boats. They were farmers, shepherds, traders. On the islands they had found obsidian, the most precious mineral of those times. in the first centuries of the fourth millennium BC, the first inhabited nucleus was built on the castle of Lipari. At the end of the 3rd millennium BC, with the beginning of the Bronze Age, new ethnic groups arrived in Lipari and the Aeolian Islands, arriving also from Mycenaean Greece, which, with daring navigations, explored western seas. From these wind power the islands drew the name they still retain. To these are reported the legends of the mythical king Aeolus, lord of the winds, mentioned in Homer's Odyssey.
Depopulated at the end of the 10th century BC, perhaps due to rivalry between different peoples for the maritime supremacy of the lower Tyrrhenian, the islands remained almost deserted for some centuries.
 The new settlers found themselves first of all in the need to defend themselves against Etruscan raids (Tirenni). They then had to set up a powerful fleet, with which they brought back great victories against them, securing supremacy over the Tyrrhenian Sea.
We have no information on Lipari throughout the Roman imperial age (I-IV century AD)
In the centuries of the high Middle Ages, Lipari was therefore a destination for pilgrims, who settled here from neighboring and distant countries. Around the Aeolian Islands, particularly in Lipari and Vulcano, a rich and colorful harvest of traditions flourished in the early Middle Ages. The Vulcano crater was then considered as the mouth of Hell.
In 839, Lipari was attacked and destroyed by an incursion of Muslims who massacred and deported the population and profaned the relics of St. Bartholomew.
Lipari remained for some centuries almost completely deserted, until the Normans reconquered Sicily, which in 1083 installed the abbot Ambrogio with a nucleus of Benedictine monks on Lipari. Around the monastery, of which vestiges remain beside the cathedral, an urban nucleus returned to form.
In 1131 the bishopric of Lipari was reconstituted together with that of Patti. Roberto I, King of Naples, in 1340, took possession of Lipari. In 1540 the city was sacked by the ferocious pirate Ariadeno Barbarossa, who took away the unhappy inhabitants as slaves. Lipari was subsequently rebuilt and repopulated by Charles V and since then followed the fate of Sicily and the realm of Naples.