Marciana is on the Capanne Mount and it is a municipality of the Island of Elba. Its origins, documented in the Archaeological Museum, date to the Bronze Age. From the sea, the Fortress of Marciana, built by the Pisans in the XII century, stands out. Near the Madonna del Monte's Sanctuary at 630 m. asl, there is Napoleon' s chair, used by the Emperor during his exile, according to the legend.

This town has always interested Pisa first and later the Principality of Piombino for its peculiar position inside the Island of Elba, since it bridged the naval route between the port of the city and the Corsica island.
This medieval village, dominated by the Byzantines after the fall of the Roman Empire and sacked by the Barbarians, was founded on a previous Roman settlement dating to the second half of the I century B.C.
In the IX century, the Church gave the Island of Elba to the Pisans who offered to protect its Christian identity from the relentless incursions and devastations by the Saracens. It was in this period that many fortifications appeared and the urban development of the ancient village of Marciana depended upon one of them.
After the battle of Meloria (1284), Pisa's power started to weaken.
After years of constant decline, Gherardo Appiani sold the town to the Visconti family and he only kept the control over the Principality of Piombino and over the islands.
Marciana became a strongpoint of the Principality of the Appiani family, thanks to whom it experienced its period of maximum splendour and economic growth, besides becoming an important military station for defence along the coastal stretches of Elba and Piombino. In particular, the inhabitants of Marciana grew attached to Gherardo Appiani' s wife, Donna Paola Colonna, considered as the partisan of the prosperity and the progress of the town.
The creation of a mint to strike coin (a practice existing only into the most flourishing trading towns in Tuscany), the restructuring of the ancient Pisan stronghold and the construction of the Casa Appiani were all due to her.
With time, the following rulers conflicted both with the growing pressure by the Medicean Florentine Grand Duchy, that soon conquered one part of the island corresponding to Portoferraio, and with the Spanish, who settled in the area of Forte Longone since 1603. The Austrian troops of Ferdinand II of Hapsburg came substituted the Florentines around the first half of the XVIII century.
The reunification of Elba occurred with the Napoleon's occupation and, later, with the Restauration in 1815, when the whole territory was given to the Tuscan Grand Duchy until the Unity of Italy in 1860.
The history of Marciana was enriched with one more chapter in 1951, when the separation of Marciana Marina, which created its own administration, occurred.