Village of Perticara

A landscape of ravines characterizes the village of Perticara which rises at the base of Mount Aquilone, covered by a vast pine forest and a centuries-old chestnut grove. Land famous for the production of sulfur, this area has been home to man since ancient times as evidenced by the numerous archaeological finds that confirm the passage right in the area of sulfur outcrop, also Roman troops corroborating the hypothesis that this people already extracted the mineral to manufacture the so-called "Greek fire". Important center even in medieval times, it is in the sec. XVIII that the mining activity consolidates its importance to acquire the character of industrial practice in the first half of 1800. In 1917, the Montecatini company acquired the concession of exploitation of the sulfur field by projecting the Perticara mine into the national industrial landscape. 1600 men built a huge underground city: almost 100 kilometers of galleries on 9 levels up to the closure for economic reasons in 1964. Thanks to the will of the miners and the initiative of the local Pro Loco, in 1970 the Historical Mining Museum was born of Perticara to testify the hard mining work in the subsoil that has largely involved the population of Alta Valmarecchia. Sulfur - Historical Mining Museum of Perticara is today one of the most important mining documentation and industrial archeology centers in Europe.