Monte Rosso, the Lost Island of Bari: Emmanuele Mola’s Forgotten Account of a Submerged Landmark by Carlo Coppola

The story of Monte Rosso, the mysterious underwater shoal off Bari’s coast, has fascinated generations. Yet the first documented account by Emmanuele Mola reveals a historical reality far more intriguing than local legend.

By Carlo Coppola

Just offshore from Bari’s Sant’Antonio Pier lies a place the city has not seen for nearly two centuries. Yet it has never ceased to tell its story. Today it is known as Monte Rosso — or Monde Russe, in the dialect of earlier generations. It is now a submerged shoal facing the renowned Basilica of Saint Nicholas, one of the most important landmarks on the Adriatic coast.

Local tradition portrays Monte Rosso as a small inhabited island, perhaps even a sacred place lost beneath the sea. Historical evidence, however, tells a different and more restrained story. Yet that story is no less worthy of being remembered.

The first scholar to record its existence was Emmanuele Mola, who in 1796 published an article entitled Sul Cangiamento del Lido Apulo (“On the Transformation of the Apulian Coastline”) in the Giornale Letterario di Napoli. After extensive research in the digital archives of the National Library of Rome, we were able to recover the original text. What emerged was revealing: many claims repeated over the years by commentators and media outlets appear to have been embellished—or, at times, simply invented—to amplify the mystery surrounding Monte Rosso.

Mola wrote in the style typical of Enlightenment-era scholars. His aim was to reconstruct historical and geographical reality through observation and reason, distancing the subject from sensationalism, folklore, and the supernatural. In doing so, he sought to preserve historical memory rather than obscure it.

A prominent intellectual of his time, Mola served as Public Professor and Prefect of the Royal Studies and Antiquities of Apulia. Interestingly, he did not describe Monte Rosso as an independent island. Instead, he examined it within the broader history of Bari, noting that the city of his own era appeared much smaller than the Bari that had resisted the siege of Emperor Louis II or flourished under Robert Guiscard with a population said to have reached fifty thousand inhabitants.

This observation led him to formulate a striking hypothesis: ancient Bari may once have extended further northward into the Adriatic Sea. To support this idea, Mola cited the opinions of several learned men and presented two visible pieces of evidence.

First, on calm and clear days, fragments of extensive structures could allegedly be observed on the seabed. Second, on a nearby rocky outcrop known at the time as Pendino—the site later identified as Monte Rosso—one could see “the foundations of large buildings, believed to be an ancient fortress guarding the adjacent city.”

In Mola’s interpretation, therefore, the remains belonged not to a separate settlement or religious sanctuary but to a defensive structure protecting medieval Bari. It was a cautious hypothesis, yet one grounded in direct observation and therefore more convincing than the elaborate legends that would emerge later.

Perhaps the most revealing passage in Mola’s work demonstrates the intellectual honesty of a true historian. Reflecting on the disappearance of these structures, he wrote that it was impossible to determine whether they had been submerged through the gradual advance of the sea, violent marine upheavals, or earthquakes, owing to the complete absence of ancient records.

Rather than inventing explanations, Mola acknowledged the limits of available evidence. It was precisely within this gap between observable remains and unknown causes that later legends flourished, transforming a probable coastal fortification into a mythical sacred island.

Further references appeared in 1858 when historian Giulio Petroni, in his History of Bari, cited a municipal decree from 1693 describing the rocky formation as a “new island” (nuova insula). In the early twentieth century, Armando Perotti visited the site and reported seeing squared stone blocks that appeared to have been placed by human hands.

Remarkably, recent underwater investigations conducted by local archaeological associations and researchers from the University of Bari have partially confirmed these observations. Divers have identified worked stone blocks and fragments of ancient amphorae on the seabed, providing tangible evidence of human activity in the area.

Between documented history and the enduring tale of a submerged chapel, Emmanuele Mola’s greatest contribution remains his recognition that Monte Rosso concealed a kernel of historical truth worthy of investigation. He suggested the existence of an ancient defensive structure—not an island populated by residents, adorned with shrines, or functioning as a lazaretto for victims of Saint Anthony’s Fire, as some later traditions claimed.

Equally important was his willingness to admit uncertainty, a quality that remains rare among those who write about the past.

Ultimately, Monte Rosso continues to embody Bari’s fascination with what may have been lost beneath the waves—or perhaps what never existed except in collective imagination. During winter storms, local folklore tells of bells ringing beneath the sea, echoing through the wind and waves. Listening to those sounds, generations of Bari’s children dreamed of distant Eastern worlds from the tales of the One Thousand and One Nights, recalling that Bari itself was once the capital of an Arab Emirate — though, regrettably, without the oil wealth of modern legends.

Carlo Coppola