Island
Insula Arenaria
Palmarola
Listen to the story
A small, roughly trapezoidal island is drawn off the coast beside the station of Albingaunum, and its label is usually read as Insula Arenaria, the sandy island. Only the beginning and the ending are still secure, because the name has faded and older copies disagree on the letters in between. That reading led older research to Palmaria, opposite the Roman town of Luna. Yet the island sits near Albenga and a river mouth, which rather suggests Gallinara, a rocky islet about fifteen hundred metres offshore, and a restored name Gallinaria. The Roman writer Varro explained that name by the wild hens living there.