The modest hill of Monte Castello, immediately behind the Procchio Bay, overlooking the south coast of Elba and offers a convenient location for the opposite inlets control, dominating the plain south of Marina di Campo.

On top of the hill imposing walls of granite blocks, as well as fulfilling a defensive function, it served as terracing to expand the flat area. The walls, built in the mid day blocks and large, they were set on a soundstage floor slabs carefully prepared and connected. The excavation investigation concentrated in the west and has highlighted a vast central room, in communication with a courtyard and two side rooms near the boundary wall. The excavation, conducted inside (Essays II and III) and outside (the Wise) of a large rectangular room, revealed the existence of a large flat floor with earthenware. AI lower floor, the presence of large dolia containing wheat, set on a dirt floor, made it possible to interpret the space as a warehouse for the storage of foodstuffs. Built on a stone base, the elevation was made of bricks and roof tiles of Trai ensured the wood cover. Layers of collapse and say burning traces retain the memory of a traumatic event: a destruction followed by a fire, that the latest research in the field allows you to set in, the first decades of the third century BC It does not seem so far proposed more sustainable connection with the initial events of the first Punic War (263-241 BC) The fortress of Monte Castello was born towards the end of the fifth century BC, acquires great importance in the fourth century, when the exploitation and processing of mineral Elba know a strong increase, to cease to be a ” bastion for the defense of iron “in the mid-third century BC If Castiglione di S. Martino survives its destruction and was rebuilt and inhabited throughout the second century BC, Mt. Procchio castle does not seem to share the same fate. the reoccupation of the hill had to be neither important nor long-lasting and could possibly join the troubled period of civil wars, since the moment of the final abandonment can probably be placed at the end of the century BC