Devil's Island (Kourou) Devil's Island (Kourou) Devil's Island (French: Île du Diable) is the third-largest island of the Salvation's Islands, an island group in the Atlantic Ocean. It is located approximately 14 km (9 mi) off the coast of French Guiana in South America just north of the town of Kourou. It has an area of 14 ha (34.6 acres). The island was a part of a controversial French penal colony located in French Guiana for 101 years, from 1852 to 1953. Although it was the smallest part of the penal colony, it is notorious for being used for internal exile of French
Gorgona Agricultural Penal Colony the lands remained under the control of the Carthusians until the 1770s when the order sold its lands to the Grand Duke of Tuscany (the future Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor) who turned the island into a fishing village and attempted to repopulate it. Following the unification of Italy in the mid-19th century, the island came under the control of the Kingdom of Italy which converted the former monastery lands into an experimental agricultural penal colony in 1869. Located across the Ligurian Sea from the Italian port city of Livorno, Gorgona island is considered "impossible" to escape from which has