Palagruža can be reached only by a chartered motorboat, requiring a journey of several hours from nearby islands like Lastovo, Korčula, or Vis.

[5] The highest point of the archipelago, on Vela Palagruža (Italian: Pelagosa Grande), is about 90 metres (300 feet) above sea level.

Weather conditions on the central Adriatic are dictated by movements of low-pressure area, which causes frequent changes of bora and scirocco (jugo) winds.

[8] Due to its remote position in the middle of the sea, Palagruža exhibits more Mediterranean climate features than the Croatian coast.

[10] Human presence artifacts on Palagruža from the 2nd millennium BC are more rare, but then there are large finds from ancient Greek seafarers, including Late Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Early Roman periods.

Speculation is fueled by the discovery of a painted 6th-century BC Greek potsherd with the name Diomed[es] on it,[14] making a shrine by the Cult of Diomedes on Palagruža seem plausible.

In 1806 these islands became part of the Kingdom of Italy, and the Pelagosa, in particular, were the subject of an article in the decree issued by the General Superintendent of Dalmatia, Vincenzo Dandolo, to allow the fishermen of Comisa to use sardellare nets, or "voighe", in the surrounding waters.

From 1809 to 1815 the islands were formally part of the Illyrian Provinces of the French Empire, to then return, with the Congress of Vienna in 1815, under the dominion of Austria, resulting in their being registered in the district of Lissa, circle of Spalato, of the Kingdom of Dalmatia.

There is no evidence that the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ever took concrete action to establish its sovereignty over the Pelagose, while the Austrian authorities continued to exercise it, sending ships and missions aimed at building a lighthouse, in particular in the year 1858 (Pietro Acerboni, embarked on the Austrian ship “Curtatone” and in charge of the lighthouses of the Deputation of the Stock Exchange of Trieste).

In this period the archipelago was not inhabited, except temporarily; reason why - just like nearby Pianos - there are no traces in the civil registry of the district of Serracapriola, to which the Tremiti islands belonged, while it was recorded in the registers of the parish of Comisa, on the island of Lissa, whose inhabitants had built a chapel dedicated to San Michele in the 18th century, later reconstructing it in the first half of the 19th century.

After an examination of the documentation, within the framework of the work of a joint Italian and Austro-Hungarian hydrographic commission for the Adriatic, it was recognized that sovereignty belonged to Vienna, as testified by the British consul in Trieste, Richard Francis Burton, who explicitly cited how the Comisani had produced documentation [19] After Italy's entry into the World War I in May 1915, the country's armed forces occupied the islands on 11 July 1915.

The archipelago reverted to Italy between the two World Wars, as part of the Province of Zara (now Zadar, Croatia), and was ceded to Yugoslavia in 1947.