Of the many sightseeing areas on the island, you cannot miss the “iron” itinerary. The island’s mining area covers 1,948 hectares and includes the Rio, Rio Albano, Calamita, Ginevro, Sassineri and Terranera mines. These areas provide an excellent example of the relationship of important geo-mineralogical phenomena with mining activity that has developed over three thousand years. In short, natural processes set in a picturesque landscape.

The Etruscans began to exploit the mines as early as the eighth century BC. Iron mining went hand in hand with an intense iron working activity, to which the remains of numerous furnaces bear witness. With the innovations brought by the industrial revolution, mining continued up to the early ‘eighties, when it was brought to a halt. The island’s mines are not depleted and in fact it is estimated that they still hold over 16 million tons of iron.

In the Rio Marina mining district, during the summer months, it is possible to visit the Bacino site, an authentic iron mine where the Elban miners toiled for over a hundred years.
Here, industrial processing took the form of opencast mining, for which the wide shallow step technique was used over a heavily fractured area where oxide and hydroxide masses combine with layers of quartzose conglomerates and the underlying metamorphic schistose rocks.

Haematite is the main mineral and is considered amongst the finest in Europe; the Elban version of this iron oxide is known as oligist.Other minerals on the island include pyrite and quartz crystals, either white or reddish with haematite, while widespread incrustations of copiapite can be seen in the spring.

You are surrounded by a natural museum. With just a little patience you will come across iron minerals there, in the very place where nature put them, and be able to see and touch them as they rise above ground.

To satisfy the growing number of requests from the many people interested in mineralogy and geology, the Bacino site is now open to the public. Today visitors can get a taste of what will soon be one of the biggest mineral parks, and benefit from a life-size model of all that the abstract treatment of specialised text-books fails to illustrate clearly; in short, one of the greatest exhibitions in Italy.

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