Prince of Lampedusa

The Prince of Lampedusa was a minor title in the Sicilian nobility.

The first prince of Lampedusa and Linosa was Don Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi, who received the title from Charles II of Spain in 1630. In the 1840s, the Tomasi family sold the island to the Kingdom of Naples.

The Palazzo Lampedusa in Palermo was badly damaged during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. The famous Italian novelist Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was the last to hold the title of prince; Italian noble titles were abolished in 1946. About a decade later, shortly before he died, he wrote The Leopard, a novel based in part on the life of his great-grandfather, Don Giulio. During the same period in which he was writing The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi adopted his own distant cousin Gioacchino Lanza, thereafter known as Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, but the latter did not use the extinct noble title.

Another notable member of the family, though not a prince in his own right, was diplomat and Italian Senator Pietro Tomasi Della Torretta.