www.parcoasinara.org/en/history
An agricultural penal colony was established at Cala d'Oliva, by order of King Umberto I of Italy.[1] About 100 families of Sardinian farmers and Genoese fishermen who lived on Asinara were obliged to move to Sardinia, where they founded the village of Stintino.[6]

During the First World War, the island was used as a prison camp for some 24,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers,[7] 5,000 of whom died during their imprisonment.[2] It was used as a place of detention for Ethiopian POWs during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. The majority of the Ethiopians kept there were members of the Ethiopian nobility.

In the 1970s the prison facilities were refurbished as a maximum security prison. In past years it was assigned mainly to detention of mafia members and terrorists, and it has housed the likes of the mafia boss Totò Riina. Prisoners and warders were the only inhabitants of Asinara for about 110 years, until the prison closed in December 1997.[2]