Portoferraio, Ferraio, the iron city, as it was originally called, dates, at any rate, from Roman times. The name would suggest this, and the fact is abundantly proved by Roman walls, pavements of brick and marble, tombs with inscriptions, skeletons, lamps, etc., coins of consuls and emperors, workmen’s tools, that were unearthed from time to time during the seventeenth century, when excavations were being made for the subterranean cisterns, guard-houses, powder-magazines, halls of every kind that honeycomb the ground. Towards the end of April, 1548, there arrived in the bay below Portoferraio a fleet bearing one thousand soldiers, three hundred sappers and miners, and the architect John Baptist Camerini. Ferraio was at that time a heap of ancient ruins, but Cosimo I., the merchant Duke of Tuscany, whose coasts lay open to the invasion of the Turks, and whose galleys were continually assailed by pirates, concluded that the best possible points of defence against these redoubtable enemies were Ferraio and Piombino. With a large sum of money, and a very great deal of diplomacy, he persuaded Charles V. (who thought that the same points of defence would be as irritating to the French as to the Turks) to grant him the places. The agreement was hardly concluded when the Duke’s men landed on the little peninsula, quarried the blocks, ready squared to their hands from the Roman villas and walls, made a brick kiln on the coast near by where there was suitable clay, obtained excellent mortar from the stones of the neighbouring hills, and in a fortnight had raised the walls breast high. Cosimo made two visits to the island to inspect the works, living not in Ferraio itself, but in a house on the hillside opposite, that is still known as the Casa del Duca (Duke’s house), and bears on its garden wall a defaced, weather-stained marble bust of Duke Cosimo. The Turks, the French, the Genoese, and the rest of Cosimo’s many enemies were beside themselves with rage. Elba was wasted throughout its length and breadth, the new town—no longer Ferraio, but Cosmopolis—was besieged by mighty fleets, intrigues were obstinately kept up to induce the Emperor to revoke his grant, but the Duke (now Grand Duke) made head against force and intrigue; the town remained in his hands, and still, as witness to his might, bears over its gateways the proud inscription: templa, moenia, domos, arces, portum, cosmus florentinorum dux II. a fundamentis erexit an. MDXLVIII