Museo archeologico-industriale «Su Suergiu»

Mining museum in the administration building of the Su Suergiu antimony mine, in the Sardinian Geomining Park.

Opening hours unknown

About the museum

The Su Suergiu mine, in Villasalto in the Gerrei, was for decades Italy’s main site for the extraction and processing of antimony. It operated from around 1880 until its closure in 1987, and during the two world wars its smelter produced about 90% of the national antimony. The site is part of the Parco geominerario storico e ambientale della Sardegna, recognised by UNESCO.

The mining village is reached along an avenue of pines that rises to the administration building, a 19th-century two-storey building with a pronaos entrance, arches, Corinthian columns and cement friezes alternating floral motifs with shovels and picks. On the ground floor were the director’s offices, administrative and technical; on the upper floor his residence, with a panoramic terrace overlooking the mining activities and the Sardinian peaks. Today the building houses the archaeological-mining museum, with drills, clamps, parts of furnaces, minerals (in particular antimony), reproductions of photographs, maps and historical documents that reconstruct the phases of production and the life of the miners.

In the village there are also the chemical laboratory, warehouses, the canteen and accommodation, partly converted into lodging facilities. The abandoned plants look out onto a yard with a rotary kiln; the most important is the smelter, built in 1882, which extends horizontally with large buttresses.

Highlights

19th-century administration building with cement friezes of shovels and picks
Display of minerals, materials and mining equipment
1882 smelter and rotary kiln
Mining village in the Rio Sessini valley
Part of the Sardinian Geomining Park