MINE - Mining and Regional Museum

The mines around Castelnuova dei Sabbioni, 35 km south-east of Florence were Italy’s principal source of lignite in the twentieth century but are now exhausted. The Santa Barbara Mine, worked by the electric power company, Ene Nazional per l’Energia Electrica, was the last to work. The museum and documentation centre display tools, equipment and minerals from the workings, and also provide evidence, both documentary and artefactual, of villages in the region that were destroyed by large-scale open cast workings.