OLD COSSYRA
	There is a poem written by a "Pantesco" and dedicated to all those who come into contact with Pantelleria for the first time: "Do you know what perfume my land has - in the morning when the dew is fresch? - Do you know what perfume the wood has - at dawn when the sun has just risen? - Do you know what perfume the sea has, - the fish fresh caught, the musle pulled away. - The foaming white wave, shining and running - Over the black rock? - You cannot know - you who breathe the dust - Of bricks, asphalt and cement. - You breathe odours not the sweet perfume smells". These are verses you cannot understand if you do not know Pantelleria in its 83 sq.km, if you do not know and learn to understand the people of this island which lies between Sicily and Tunisia, in the Sicily Channel at the centre of the Mediterranean. Historically, the first people of whom traces are found are those who lived in Mursia in the neolithic period. Perhaps they came from what is now Tunisia, which is only 70 miles away from Pantelleria. As a testimony of their passage there remain the sepulchral monuments called "Sesi" made from stone and the fortifications known as "Muro Alto" (in the Cimillia area). In the 7th century B.C. the Phoenicians occupied the island calling it "Hiranin" which perhaps means "island of the birds". Pantelleria thus became a rich colony of which traces can still be found in the zone of the acropolis (San Marco). During the Punic Wars, the island was fought over by the Carthiginians and the Romans and conquered by the latter, and was renamed (about 117 B.C.) "Cossyra" which means smaller in comparison to Malta which is bigger. After the Romans, Pantelleria was conquered by the Vandals, then by the Byzantines and again by the Arabs. The latter left an imprint, even today, visible above all in the place-names and in the island's characteristic constructions, the "dammusi" which are cubic houses with thick walls and dome-like roofs. It was the Arabs who probably changed the old Roman name of "Cossyra" to "Bent el rion" which means literally daughter of the wind. After the Arabs, came the Normans who annexed the island to Sicily.