Historically, Lampedusa was a landing place and a maritime base for the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans and Arabs. The Romans established a plant for the production of the prized fish sauce known as garum. As a result of pirate attacks, the island became uninhabited.
The first prince of Lampedusa and Linosa was Giulio Tomasi, ancestor of the famous writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, who received the title from Charles II of Spain in 1630. A century later the Tomasi family began a program of resettlement. In the 1840s the Tomasi family sold the island to the Kingdom of Naples.
In 1860 the island became part of the new Kingdom of Italy, but the new Italian government limited its activities there to building a penal colony.
In June 1943, during the Second World War, as a precursor to the Allied invasion of Sicily the island was secured without resistance in Operation Corkscrew by the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Lookout and ninety-five men of the 2nd Battalion the Coldstream Guards. White flags had been sighted in the port, and when Lieutenant Corbett of Lookout approached the port in a motor launch he was told that the island's garrison wished to surrender. The Governor's formal surrender was accepted in the island's underground command-post by a combined Army/Navy delegation sometime after 9:00am on 13 June 1943. During this process the governor handed his sword to the Coldstream company commander, Major Bill Harris. A second unofficial claim has also been made regarding the capitulation of the island, when earlier that same day elements of the garrison had also attempted to surrender in unusual circumstances when the pilot of a Royal Air Force Swordfish aircraft landed after suffering problems with his compass.
The first telephone connection with Sicily was installed only in the 1960s. In the same decade an electric power station was built.
In 1972 part of the western side of the island became a United States Coast Guard LORAN-C
