A 6-year-old girl, one of three inhabitants of the island of Montecristo, will be educated via the Internet so she can continue to live in the wooded paradise off the Italian coast.
Chiara has lived all her life on the island, a highly protected nature reserve open to just 1,000 visitors a year.
She and her parents, Serenella and Paolo Del Lama, are the only inhabitants of the island, the setting of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Montecristo and the site of the now-dilapidated Benedictine monastery that inspired the novel.
Chiara, who was to have left the island to live with her grandparents on the mainland, some three hours away by boat, will take reading and writing lessons and communicate with her teacher and classmates online using a specially devised software package.
"The Internet was the only way to allow this little girl to remain a few years more on island paradise where she was born," said Vittorio Monarca, a school officer in the Tuscan village of Riotorto.
