A day at the Gambatesa Mine
Portofino and the Tigullio
It is a unique world of tunnels, underground passages, and small trains that run tens of kilometres deep into the mountain. You can still hear the banging of pickaxes, the chants of toil, the heavy footsteps of miners at work. Today, the mine, which remained in perfect condition and active until about forty years ago, is a pole of attraction for speleologists, enthusiasts but above all for those who are curious and want to discover a new story about Liguria.
A maze of tunnels
By car, the site can be reached by exiting at the Lavagna tollgate on the A12 motorway and taking the provincial road to Carasco and then heading towards Ne and Val Graveglia. The excursion starts immediately after the participants have received, in a video room, the necessary information to better understand the world of mining and in particular the history of the Gambatesa mine. Then you put the indispensable miner's helmet on your head, equip yourself with suitable shoes, a cape and a lamp, and set off on your underground adventure.
On the little train
First by small train (the same one used by the miners) and then on foot, one travels through a maze of small tunnels, interconnected on different levels with so-called
Around the mine
Around Gambatesa and its galleries, there is a whole world to discover which testifies to the rich history of Europe's most important manganese mine, with over a century of activity. It is worth seeing the compressor room, the oldest in the history of mining, the detonator depot, the pay room, where fatigued men soiled with earth and ore queued up to get their fair share of the earnings, always inevitably lower than their fatigue.
