The Bertoleoni family is the custodian of a story that has its roots in the early nineteenth century: it would have been King Carlo Alberto of Savoy who granted the noble title to Giuseppe, the progenitor. The descendants now support themselves by running a restaurant
The king of Tavolara preferred normal daily work to the comfortable life of the court. He does not have a castle, but a restaurant that welcomes thousands of visitors every year. And when we show up in his kingdom we find him busy in the family garden at the venerable age of 88 under the scorching sun of a mid-August afternoon. Never a monarch in history has shown such humility, one would think: a sovereign among the people and for the people. Also owned by him, for example, is the shuttle service to reach the island by sea from the overlooking Porto San Paolo. «That’s how I am: I like to make people feel good, not to make anyone want for anything – Antonio Bertoleoni tells us between the tables of his activity, known to all as “Tonino”, sixth sire of the reigning dynasty -. I love the company, being together, conversation, and I’m happy that people appreciate it. This also happens in Tavolara, an unmistakable massif of granite, limestone and Mediterranean scrub that rises from the crystalline sea of Gallura, at the mouth of the Gulf of Olbia. One of the countless natural paradises of Sardinia, but cloaked in a legend that makes it even more evocative: that – unknown to most – of the «smallest kingdom in the world».
Galeotta was a joke
According to the main historical reconstructions, it all began in 1807, when the 29-year-old Giuseppe Bertoleoni, a resident of Corsica but a member of a family of Genoese origin, set out in search of a new land to live in and settled in the uninhabited Tavolara after having temporarily lived in the archipelago of La Maddalena. He moved there with one of his two wives – in fact he had conflicts with justice for reasons of bigamy – dedicating himself mainly to the breeding of local goats, characterized by a particular golden color of the teeth due to the composition of the grass they ate. . Thus we arrived at 1836, the year in which none other than Carlo Alberto di Savoia landed on the island. He introduced himself to Giuseppe as the king of Sardinia but the latter, perhaps convinced that the foreigner was in the mood for jokes, answered him surrounded by his gold-toothed flock: «And I am the king of Tavolara!» . Together they spent a week of hunting and conviviality, after which Carlo Alberto, grateful for the hospitality received, is said to have actually enfeoffed the island to the man and his descendants. As proof of this, an official investiture parchment would later reach the state property office of Tempio Pausania, however being lost over time. Thanks to the subsequent absence of the Bertoleonis from the noble lists of the Kingdom of Italy, there is no tangible proof that such a document really existed, but King Tonino swears he saw it in the fifties in the hands of a businessman who made it disappear of himself. In short, all that remains is to trust the stories handed down orally from generation to generation. Like the one according to which since 1896 a photograph of the royal family, at the time led by King Charles I, taken by the crew of the ship Hms Vulcan at the alleged request of none other than Queen Victoria, has been kept in Buckingham Palace. Accompanying the shot, a copy of which is currently on display at the restaurant, the following caption would also have been reported: «The royal family of Tavolara, in the gulf of Terranova Pausania (old name of Olbia, editor’s note), the smallest kingdom in the world» .
The old photograph in the restaurant. King Charles I is in the center in the back row
The founding myths are like this: sometimes trying to historicize them only risks taking away the charm and poetry of the places to which they refer. What would Rome be without Romulus and Remus? What would Naples be without Partenope? Well, Tavolara has the Bertoleonis and perpetuates their memory. Just behind the Spalmatore di Terra, the enchanting beach on which hundreds of tourists fill up on beauty every day in the summer period, there is in fact a small cemetery where all the rulers of the dynasty rest, starting with Paul I, son of Giuseppe I and father of Charles I, who not surprisingly is responsible for the main burial (complete with a masonry crown soaring towards the sky). It was he who designed the flag of the kingdom: white with a red shield and a six-pointed gold star in the center. Precisely the one that King Tonino shows off at the entrance to his restaurant.
King Paul’s tomb
Credits: corriere.it
Author:
