Tour of industrial archaeology in Calabria

Founded by Albanian refugees in the second half of the 15th century, Lungro, in the province of Cosenza, is an important reference point for the entire Italian Albanian community (arbëreshë), a true religious capital and the seat of the Eparchy of the Greek-Byzantine rite in Calabria.

The first stop on our itinerary in the footsteps of Calabrian industrial archaeology is the Historical Museum of the Lungro Salt Mine, a testimony to one of the oldest and most important mines in Europe, used since the time of the Greek settlers of Sibari, then by the Romans and Normans, who gave rise to a flourishing trade in rock salt transported by mule.

The museum consists of 9 rooms, each named after one of the 9 galleries into which the mine was divided. Inside, the history and mining activities of the ancient salt mine of Lungro are reconstructed in detail, with the help of descriptive panels and period accounts (by illustrious scholars and visitors who frequented the site between the 19th and 20th centuries).  

The second leg of the tour on the traces of industrial archaeology in Calabria takes us to talk about a regional food excellence: Liquorice of Calabria PDO. The right place to discover all the secrets of the production and processing of this precious root is the Amarelli Factory in Rossano (Municipality of Corigliano-Rossano, in the province of Cosenza). Here, around the year one thousand, a family saga began that has continued successfully to the present day, recounted step by step in the halls of the ‘’Giorgio Amarelli‘’ Liquorice Museum, one of the 8 Corporate Museums that can be visited in Calabria.

Among engravings, documents, books, photos and period clothing, agricultural tools and everyday objects, the experience of one of the most important and well-known family businesses in Calabria comes to life. Inside the large space of the Concio (1731), it is possible to discover the secrets of liquorice processing, from the sheaves of root to the most modern extraction plants, along a guided tour that thrills children and adults alike.

Continuing in a southerly direction, still in the province of Cosenza, the town of Longobucco awaits us to reveal another great mining tradition, this time linked to silver extraction. In the heart of the Sila National Park, it is possible to discover a mining area of very ancient origins: an area rich in wells from which silver galena was extracted, which was then worked by the Greeks and Romans to mint their coins. It seems that Abbot Gioacchino da Fiore used Longobucco silver to make two chalices designed by him. These objects were often donated to popes and are still displayed in various museums (e.g. in Naples), as well as in the local Mother Church.

Those wishing to discover the places and techniques of silver extraction can walk directly from the centre of Longobucco along the historical-naturalistic Mining Trail. This is a fascinating path, equipped and illustrated with informative panels that tell the history of silver mines and the ways in which galena was extracted and processed. 

The last stop on the tour in the province of Cosenza is the village of Mendicino, home to an ancient semi-industrial silk production. Calabrian silk is one of the most representative artefacts of regional identity. Linked to the arrival of silkworms imported from the East by Greek-Byzantine monks, silk developed over the centuries in a number of Calabrian districts, including the Mendicino area, reaching large-scale industrial forms (as in Reggio Calabria and Catanzaro). In the so-called ‘’Silk Village‘’, there are ancient spinning mills that have been refurbished and tools that are still in working order, making it possible to understand in detail the stages of transition from manual to semi-industrial processing.

Just take a walk in the ‘’Tre Valloni‘’ River Park, just below the town, and you will come across the Filanda Gaudio and the Dynamic Silk Museum. The former, restored down to the smallest detail, is set up on two floors and includes the authentic furnace from which the silkworm secretions were extracted, the work tools, the treatment bench and the various machines used to process the raw silk; the museum, which includes a multimedia space, displays a series of more evolved machines, such as those that allowed for production on a larger scale, still in operation. 

In this fifth stage in our discovery of industrial archaeology in Calabria, we move to the province of Crotone, specifically to Cirò Marina, to visit another landmark of regional production. Along the beautiful Costa dei Saraceni, the prized Cirò DOC wine has been produced for centuries. To find out more, we visit another of Calabria's Corporate Museums offering an unmissable sensory experience.

We are in one of Calabria's most famous wineries, in the Vites - Librandi Wine Museum exhibition space, dedicated to Cirò wine and the knowledge of the area's winemakers. The museum is housed in the old Rosaneti Estate, an early 19th-century building whose ground floor houses a centuries-old walled palmento, the heart and iconic symbol of the winery. The rich collection of tools and instruments tells the story of work in the fields and the history of the family from the remotest evidence of Magna Graecia to the present day through tastings, multimedia activities and a special ‘’olfactory space‘’. 

The search for the remains of the first Calabrian industry in the province of Catanzaro takes us straight to Lamezia Terme, an important commercial centre and nerve centre for regional transport (from the International Airport to the Central Station) along the Riviera dei Tramonti, on the Tyrrhenian Sea. The city's industrial history passes through important production centres and a dedicated area, in what is now Sant'Eufemia, where the former Sugar Factory complex stands. 

Today, the building is in a state of abandonment, but fans of industrial archaeology in Calabria cannot help but fantasize about the time when, starting in the 1930s, the CISSEL factory was able to process over a million quintals of sugar beet, the ancient ‘’cannamèle‘’ typical of the area: the cargo arrived in convoys or on oxen-drawn carts and was processed in special rooms, equipped with the most sophisticated machinery of the time.  

Still in Lamezia Terme, moving a little towards the coast, one comes across the remains of an unfinished work, which arouses controversial reactions both in those who see it for the first time and in experts in the field of the environment and cultural heritage: an ecomonstrum or a valuable testimony of the so-called ‘’unfinished‘’? This is the dilemma of the former Sir Wharf, an iron giant in the middle of the waves that has become, in spite of itself, one of the most ‘Instagrammed’ places on the coast and an open-air film set.  

From the Riviera dei Tramonti, on the Tyrrhenian Sea, we reach the Costa degli Aranci, on the Ionian Sea, still in the province of Catanzaro. Here, in the seaside village of Roccelletta di Borgia, lies the wonderful Scolacium National Archaeological Park. Inside, on an estate where hundreds of centuries-old olive trees are still cultivated, is the Oil Mill Museum, one of the best-preserved buildings of industrial archaeology in Calabria.

An integral part of the visit to the ancient Roman city of Scolacium (built on the remains of the Greek Skylletion), the Oil Mill Museum tells the story of PDO Calabria Oil, the origins of which are rooted in the very identity of the region, an area that has been devoted to olive growing for millennia. The land on which the park stands belonged to Baron Mazza's latifundium, an estate entirely devoted to oil production. Today's museum is housed in an oil mill dating back to 1937 and offers a complete cross-section of the production activity and the tools used: from the ancient olive presses to the most modern machines, passing through the traditional tools of Calabrian peasant life.

Still in the province of Catanzaro, going up the course of the Gallipari river, in the municipality of Badolato, one of The Most Beautiful Villages in Italy, we reach the ancient Romito hydroelectric power station, a symbolic place of electricity production in the heart of the forest. Here, the crystal-clear Romito (with a 40-metre drop) and Vitello springs form two waterfalls frequented in summer by hikers in search of refreshment.

It was precisely these springs that, from 1927 to 1962, powered the hydroelectric power station built by the local baron Pasquale Gallelli, whose ‘’castle‘’ on the outskirts of Badolato Borgo is now one of Calabria's Historical Houses. A pioneer in the new field of electrical energy, the baron created the first power plant capable of supplying electric light to the coastal towns. Although decommissioned years ago, the power station is still a fascinating site of industrial archaeology in Calabria and preserves the structure of the penstock almost intact.

Our journey on the traces of industrial archaeology in Calabria can only stop at the most important place of all, the one that until the Unification of Italy was Europe's largest steelworks. We are in the heart of the Serre Regional Park, in the province of Vibo Valentia, in the municipality of Mongiana. Here is the nerve centre of Calabria's first industry: the Bourbon Royal Ironworks, Workshops and Arms Factory, an extraordinarily important and well-preserved production-industrial complex, now a museum to revive a fundamental page of southern Italy's history.

Limonite, the iron ore extracted from the surrounding mines, was mined and processed in these forests to build Italy's first infrastructure, including the first section of the Naples-Portici railway. Founded by the Bourbon kings in 1770, the Mongiana Iron and Steel Pole boasts a number of firsts: in 1860, it had as many as 1,500 specialised workers to meet a large part of the iron and steel needs of the time and was the main centre of the Calabrian economy; the workers worked regular 8-hour shifts, without child or female exploitation; the wood was used in a conscious and controlled manner. What at the time was an ‘iron and steel village’ in the modern sense (comprising 3 blast furnaces; 3 arms factories; 29 ironworks, including Robinson and Fieramosca; 2 foundries), is today an extraordinary Ironworks and Foundries Ecomuseum spread throughout the territory, of which the adjacent Ironworks and Arms Factory Museum is a part, with multimedia exhibition spaces, tools and original weapons of the period.

Part of the previous complex, just a few kilometres away but in the municipality of Stilo, one of Italy's Most Beautiful Villages in the province of Reggio Calabria, is the monumental ‘’Ferdinandea‘’ estate, which combines the summer residence of King Ferdinand of Bourbon with another Foundry and a series of minor iron and steel complexes (the Assi Iron and Steel Complex, the ‘’Old Church‘’ Iron and Steel Park, the Royal Ironworks of Stilo), as well as the Lamberti Arms Factory.

Plundered and dismantled following the Piedmontese annexation of southern Italy (1861), the Royal Ferdinandea Foundry passed into the hands of the former Garibaldian Achille Fazzari, who, after a period in which he made it a meeting place for artists and intellectuals (the writer Matilde Serao was one of its most frequent visitors), also starting up a spring water regimentation and bottling business, in 1881 caused its definitive collapse.

Moving a little further on, in the nearby municipality of Pazzano (RC), the mining experience on the trail of industrial archaeology in Calabria takes us along yet another Mines Trail, to discover another site linked to the extraction of limonite and the Royal Ironworks of Stilo. Most of the mine mouths are located around the suggestive Shrine of Monte Stella, a Marian hermitage carved into the rock of extraordinary beauty.  

Currently, the mines are not accessible for safety reasons, but are nevertheless part of the Ecomuseum of the Ironworks and Foundries of Calabria. Of them all, the Melichicchi Mine still preserves the miners' house and the small chapel attached to it. In the process of being set up, the Mining Culture Museum will display artefacts, raw materials, processing tools and some production facilities such as the smelting crucible. At the moment, the rooms host temporary exhibitions.

Staying close by, the territory of Bivongi (RC) offers an original history linked to the exploitation and regulation of water. Known as the ‘’Village of Longevity‘’ for the number of centenarians, Bivongi maintains intact the link between man and nature and the ancestral relationship with water. Three sites of Calabrian industrial archaeology stand here: the ‘’Bagni di Guida‘’ thermal complex and hydroelectric power plant; the Bivongi Mines and the Marmarico hydroelectric power station.

The first site, linked to the former Guida Hydroelectric Power Station, now disused, rises around a nucleus of sulphurous gas springs, hence called ‘’Acque Sante‘’ by the locals. Known since Roman times, the Guida Baths can be visited at certain times of the year (generally in summer), while the sulphurous water thermal baths are freely accessible at all times. 

The second site is part of the mining-mining area along the Stilaro Valley. It includes a group of about 7 mines used for the extraction of galena, mobildeno and other minerals. The itinerary includes several murals that tell the history and activity of the miners and the remains of the Flotation Plant where the raw materials arrived via the ancient cableway to be crushed and washed in the adjacent mills.

Finally, the Marmarico Hydroelectric Plant (former SIC), active between 1928-38 and then decommissioned, is the ideal opportunity for a dip in the regenerating waters of the waterfall of the same name. The Marmarico Waterfalls used to power one of the most important electricity production systems in the region and today represent one of the most popular ‘’jumps‘’ for those in search of coolness: included among the ‘’Italian Wonders‘’ in 2011, these waterfalls reach a height of 114 metres, creating a crystal-clear lagoon at their feet.

The itinerary on the trail of early industry in Calabria takes us to the ‘’City of the Strait‘’, intoxicated by the scent of orange blossoms. Reggio Calabria is in fact the home of the much sought-after bergamot, a unique, indigenous citrus fruit that has no equal in the Mediterranean. Beginning with its very ancient cultivation, over the centuries bergamot has undergone an extraction process that has led to the production of the prized Bergamot of Reggio Calabria - Essential Oil PDO, one of the excellences of Calabrian agri-food.

The right place to discover the secrets of this fruit and its processing is the Bergamot and Food Museum, located in the Old Covered Market. The museum, founded on the initiative of the Bergamot Academy, exhibits the machinery used to extract the juice and essence, including the famous ‘Gangeri’ Bergamot Machine, a gem of Calabrian industrial archaeology, derived from a model invented in 1840 by Nicola Barillà from Reggio Calabria. Also very useful are the Bergamot Library and the photographic collection illustrating the cultivation, harvesting and processing of jasmine and opium poppy.