The history of the mines on the Island of Elba

The origin of the excavation and processing of iron ore on the Island of Elba ("celestial ore" for the Egyptians, "sideros" for the Greeks) dates back to ancient times. The Elban deposits are among the oldest iron ore deposits exploited in the world. From the dawn of history, the island has held a strategic position, both for controlling maritime traffic and for its inexhaustible mineral resources, coveted by the greatest powers of the Mediterranean.

Under Etruscan domination, due to the purity of its ore, Elba, known as "The Island of a Thousand Fires", reached its period of greatest expansion, which lasted until the end of the 1st century BC.

The traces of heaps of slag from the Etruscan "smelting furnaces," with their distinctive circular conical shape, are still visible on the island thanks to the approximately one hundred "fabbrichili," discovered by scholars. With the Etruscans, the extraction and processing of iron became a real organized industry: they had extended their domain to Elba precisely because of its massive ore deposits. Later, due to the depletion of the forests and thus the fuel for reducing iron, the processing moved to the Tuscan coastline.

The Greek navigators called Elba "Aethalia", the sooty one, and the island is mentioned by Virgil, Diodorus Siculus, and later by Varro, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder. From the 11th century onward, the mines belonged, in different forms, to the various sovereign governments of the island: the Maritime Republic of Pisa, the Lords and Princes of Piombino, the local government of the island, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and the Kingdom of Italy.

The Grand Ducal government, by "Motu Proprio" on September 24, 1840, established the right to administer the mines and extract ore from private land. This period marked the era of "Shared Administration", at the end of which the Italian government entrusted the mines to an Italian consortium represented by the Banca Generale. This was followed by a short-term lease agreement with Knight Ugo Ubaldo Tonietti, who managed the mines until 1899, when the Elba Anonima Mining and Blast Furnace Company was established.

The shift toward a capitalist-industrial model began in 1897 when the idea of developing modern steelmaking emerged in Italy. The large steel industry organized itself by using Elba’s iron ore: magnetite, hematite, limonite, siderite, and pyrite, as the primary source of steel.

In 1924, the S.p.A. Elba was succeeded by the Elba Mining Concessionary Company, which was absorbed by Ilva in 1931. In 1939, the contract passed to "Ferromin", which received extensions until 1970. Later, the concession passed into the hands of Italsider for ten years.

From 1950 onwards, with the advent of the economic boom and tourism, competition, strikes, and failed agreements, the closure of the Elba mines began, culminating in 1981 with the abandonment of the last mine: the Galleria del Ginevro.

In 1980, the mines were shut down and production ceased.

Since 1980, the concession has remained in the hands of the Società Nuova Italsider, now Ilva, which until 1992 regulated the extraction of serpentine and magnesium silicate at the Santa Filomena site in Rio.

Today, the Mineral Park of the Island of Elba and the Calamita Mineral Park ensure, through museums, guided tours, and educational workshops, the enhancement and preservation of the mining sites and the historical and cultural memory of Elba, which only thirty years ago was the island of iron and fire.