Grande Miniera di Serbariu Carbonia · Sardegna · Italy

The Sulcis coalfield in south-western Sardinia had been the subject of sporadic investigation since the early nineteenth century, but systematic modern exploitation only began in the 1930s under the autarchic economic policy of the Fascist regime. In 1936 and 1937 the Società Mineraria Carbonifera Sarda (commonly known as Carbosarda) conducted an intensive programme of exploratory boreholes across the Sulcis basin, identifying an extensive sub-bituminous coal deposit to the south of the older Sirai mine, which had been active since 1918. The new concession was applied for under the designation Serbariu in 1937, and formally granted on 18 January 1939 by decree of the Minister Secretary of State for Corporations, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale no. 45 of 23 February 1939.

Construction of the mine and its associated infrastructure proceeded rapidly. Two initial shafts were sunk and equipped with modern winding machinery, together with a power station, a washery, warehouses, workshops, and storerooms. Simultaneously, a new planned city — Carbonia — was designed by architects Gustavo Pulitzer-Finali, Cesare Valle, Ignazio Guidi, and Eugenio Montuori and built in under two years on the fascist company-town model, inaugurated by Mussolini on 18 December 1938. The city's urban plan was conceived as an integrated whole with the mine, placing the pithead buildings at the functional and symbolic centre of the settlement. At inauguration Carbonia already had some 12,000 inhabitants; within a few years the population would reach 50,000.

The mine entered full production in 1937 and rapidly expanded its workforce. Workers were recruited from across Italy, and at the height of activity some 18,000 people were employed on the site, of whom around 14,000 worked underground across three shifts of eight hours each. The deposit ultimately encompassed nine extraction shafts — Pozzo 1 through Pozzo 7, together with Pozzo Nuraxeddu Vecchio and Pozzo del Fico — reaching maximum depths of 179 metres below the surface topography, with a total of 100 kilometres of underground roadways. The coal extracted was of sub-bituminous or lignite character and was used primarily to supply the Italian national grid and nearby industrial consumers, including the Santa Gilla power station at Cagliari.

The years from 1947 to 1957 were marked by severe contraction. Italy's accession to the European Coal and Steel Community (CECA) brought pressure to rationalise domestic coal production, and the Sulcis collieries were not competitive against imported coal. A long sequence of corporate reorganisations, cantiere closures, and a general movement of remaining activity towards the centre of the basin followed. The workforce fell from approximately 14,000 in 1947 to around 5,000 by 1957. This period was marked by significant labour unrest; in 1948 a strike lasting 72 days took place at Carbonia, one of the longest in Italian mining history. The scale of the economic contraction in a community almost entirely dependent on coal extraction caused substantial emigration from the area. The construction of the new Seruci colliery accelerated the progressive dismantlement of the Serbariu basin.

In 1965 the remaining miners were taken on by ENEL, the national electricity authority, the mining concession was formally renounced, and the immovable assets passed first to the Regione Sarda and were subsequently resold. The mine was officially closed in 1971, having been declared unproductive. After closure the site deteriorated rapidly: buildings were occupied by squatters, stripped of fittings, or used as unauthorised workshops and waste dumps. The surviving twin iron headframes, iconic structures that had become emblems of Carbonia, were at risk of being broken up for scrap.

The municipal administration intervened to acquire the mine's immovable property and prevent demolition of the headframes, completing the purchase of the site in 1991. Between 1991 and 2002 several recovery and reopening proposals were developed. The first restoration contract was signed in December 2002, beginning with the lampisteria — the lamp room where miners had collected their lamps and left their identity tokens at the start of each shift. Restoration works continued until October 2006.

The Centro Italiano della Cultura del Carbone (CICC) was constituted in February 2006 as an association between the Comune di Carbonia and the Parco Geominerario Storico e Ambientale della Sardegna to manage the site. On 3 November 2006 the Grande Miniera di Serbariu reopened as the Museo del Carbone in the presence of national political representatives, the mayor, and the population of Carbonia, to the sound of the original mine siren operated by a veteran miner. The museum occupies the restored lampisteria, where the permanent exhibition on the history of coal, the mine, and the city of Carbonia is housed, together with a collection of miners' lamps, tools, photographs, documents, archive film, and video interviews with former miners. The sala argani (winding-engine room) preserves the original winding drums that raised and lowered the cages in the shafts. A restored underground gallery illustrates the evolution of coal-working methods from the 1930s to closure, with period equipment and machinery.

In 2011 Carbonia was awarded the second edition of the Council of Europe Landscape Prize for its urban and mining landscape recovery project, known as Carbonia — The Landscape Machine. From 2012 the CICC became Italy's representative in the European Coal Mining Museums Network, alongside institutions in France, Belgium, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The Museo del Carbone is an anchor point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH) and is included in two ERIH European Theme Routes. The site is within the Parco Geominerario Storico e Ambientale della Sardegna, recognised under UNESCO auspices. As of 2024–2026 the lampisteria building is undergoing significant structural restoration works; the underground gallery visit continues and a temporary exhibition space operates in the adjacent auditorium building during this period.