Author(s)

ROSSELLA PUTZOLU

Abstract

This article aims to introduce an industrial heritage site in Southwest Sardinia, in the neighbourhood of Iglesias, both its past and current features: here the Monteponi Mining Company exploited minerals extensively and constructed mining buildings and infrastructure since the 1850s. The remains of this mining heritage, consisting of buildings, houses, slag heaps, services and machineries, are still clearly visible and they show both the important role that those buildings have held since the mid-19th century and the negative effects from abandonment and degradation that have affected them since they were closed or dismantled in the 1960s. The Monteponi Company, founded in Genoa in 1850, rented the area near Iglesias and started to improve it and to equip it with new buildings and services that are beautiful exemplars of Neoclassical and Eclectic architecture, where engineering technique is combined with a sensibility for decorative details. This modernization went on until the 1920s with a proliferation of pits, galleries, workshops, foundries, a railway station with its own inclined plane, washes, residential buildings, chemical plants, forges, carpentry, and so on. The methodology of the article is based on research of archived sources, publications and the Society’s administrative records in order to illustrate the historical scenario and the architectural features of this case study and to compare them with cartographies, building projects and schemes both from the past and the present, underlining the importance of saving this heritage and its values.

Keywords

abandoned, building technology, construction history, Eclecticism, Iglesias (Sardinia), infrastructure, mining heritage, Monteponi Company, Neoclassical Architecture, safeguard