Carbonia

Carbonia is Sardinia's youngest city and one of the most unusual in Italy: it was built from scratch at the end of the 1930s to house the miners of the Sulcis coalfield, and it carries its reason for being in its name, carbone, coal. Its geometric squares, civic tower, miners' houses and office workers' blocks form one of the best-preserved ensembles of rationalist architecture in the country. Today, with the mines closed, Carbonia tells its story in its museums and in the great Serbariu mine turned into a coal museum, and reveals a much older past in the Phoenician fortress of Monte Sirai overlooking the city.

A city for coal

The Sulcis has been a land of mines for millennia, but its coal, a lignite of modest quality, was only exploited industrially from the 19th century, in the villages of Bacu Abis and Serbariu. In the 1930s the Fascist regime, aiming for energy self-sufficiency, decided to push extraction to the maximum and build a new city for the workers. Work began in 1937 and on 18 December 1938 Carbonia was inaugurated by Mussolini. Within a few years thousands of miners arrived from all over Sardinia and from many Italian regions, especially Veneto, the Marche, Abruzzo and Sicily, giving the city a mixed and open character.

After the war the mines still saw years of intense activity, but also very hard labour struggles, such as the occupation of the mine in 1948. From the 1960s the coal crisis led to the gradual closure of the pits, and the city, which had passed fifty thousand inhabitants, began to shrink. Today Carbonia is, together with Iglesias, the centre of the province of Sulcis Iglesiente, living from services, culture and tourism linked to industrial archaeology.

The rationalist city

The centre of Carbonia is Piazza Roma, designed as the civic and religious heart of the new town. Around it stand the town hall, the tall, square civic tower, the church of San Ponziano, with its red trachyte bell tower inspired by Aquileia's, the Centrale cinema-theatre and the former workers' club. The clean lines, porticoes and local materials such as trachyte and Sulcis stone make the square one of the most interesting pieces of architecture of the Fascist period.

Around it spread the districts, divided by category of worker: houses for miners, with a vegetable garden and yard, apartment blocks for clerks and villas for managers. Walking around, you can still read the city planned on the drawing board, with tree-lined avenues, schools, hospital and sports grounds. In recent years many buildings have been restored, and a modern architecture trail leads to the main sites.

The Great Serbariu Mine

The place not to miss is the Great Serbariu Mine on the edge of the city, once the most important coal mine in Italy, which closed in 1964. Today it houses the Coal Museum, one of the finest industrial archaeology museums in Europe. In the lamp room, where miners collected their lamps before going down, you follow the story of coal and the city; in the winding house you see the great machines that moved the cages in the shafts; and above all you go down into an underground gallery with guides, often former miners or their children, to understand how people worked hundreds of metres underground. The experience, with the noise, the darkness and the stories, is intense and moving.

The museum is part of Sardinia's Historical and Environmental Geo-mining Park, recognised by UNESCO, which links mining sites all over the island.

Monte Sirai and ancient history

On the hill overlooking the city, a few kilometres from the centre, lies the archaeological site of Monte Sirai, a fortress founded by the Phoenicians in the 7th century BC to control the routes from the interior to the port of Sulky, today's Sant'Antioco. It then passed to the Carthaginians, who enlarged it, and was inhabited until Roman times. You can visit the acropolis with its temple, the houses with stone rooms set along the streets, the necropolis with chamber tombs cut into the rock, and the tophet, the sanctuary where children's urns were placed. From the top the view sweeps over the Sulcis plain, the islands of Sant'Antioco and San Pietro and the sea.

The area also has the Sirai nuraghe, a fortified nuragic enclosure, and many other prehistoric sites. The Villa Sulcis Archaeological Museum in town displays finds from Monte Sirai and the Sulcis, and the E. A. Martel Museum of Palaeontology and Speleology tells the geological story of the area with fossils and minerals.

Bacu Abis and Cortoghiana

Two hamlets tell other chapters of the mining story. Bacu Abis is the oldest mining village in the Sulcis, born in the second half of the 19th century with the first coal concessions: it keeps the buildings of the old mine, the shafts and the church. Cortoghiana was also founded in the 1940s as a miners' village, with a square and a rationalist layout.

The sea nearby

Carbonia has no coast of its own, but the sea is a quarter of an hour away. To the west are the beaches of Portoscuso and Portopaglietto, and the port of Portovesme, where ferries leave for Carloforte. To the south-west, across the isthmus, you reach the island of Sant'Antioco, with its Phoenician town and the coves of Maladroxia and Coaquaddus. To the south, the white dunes of Porto Pino at Sant'Anna Arresi are among the finest beaches in southern Sardinia. Further north, the coast of Gonnesa and Iglesias offers Fontanamare, Masua and Pan di Zucchero.

Festivals and food

The city celebrates its patron San Ponziano, and in summer holds music and theatre seasons in its squares and in the spaces of the Great Mine. The memory of the miners is celebrated with events and special visits, such as on the feast of Santa Barbara, patron of miners, in December. The food combines the Sardinian traditions of the Sulcis, with seafood from the coast, Carignano del Sulcis wine and cheeses, and those brought by miners from all over Italy.

Getting there

Carbonia is about an hour from Cagliari, along the SS130 to Iglesias and then the SS126, or by regional train. The nearest airport is Cagliari. In town you get around on foot, but for Monte Sirai, the mine and the beaches a car is best. The best time to visit is spring and autumn, when you can combine discovering the industrial and archaeological heritage with the sea of the Sulcis.

What to see

• Grande Miniera di Serbariu e Museo del carbone
• Archaeological site of Monte Sirai
• Piazza Roma e la torre civica
• Nuraghe Sirai

Nearby beaches

• Coaquaddus, Sant'Antioco22 km
• La Caletta, Carloforte23 km
• Porto Pino24 km
• Cala Domestica24 km

Nearby hikes

• Cammino minerario di Santa Barbara22 km

Nearby towns

• San Giovanni Suergiu · 6 km
• Perdaxius · 7 km
• Tratalias · 8 km
• Gonnesa · 12 km
• Sant'Antioco · 13 km
• Narcao · 13 km
• Portoscuso · 13 km
• Villaperuccio · 14 km

Sources: Grande Enciclopedia della Sardegna; ISTAT. Original texts by Gotosardinia.