The oldest mines in Northern Tuscany, one of the very few places in the world where mercury can be found in its original state. The tour traces the history of extraction, from the tunnels dug by hand by miners many centuries ago to the last branches, opened thanks to the first pneumatic hammers in the early 1900s.
Mercury is normally found bound to sulfur in a red mineral called cinnabar, which must then be boiled to extract the precious metal. Cinnabar was also used to produce the pigment needed for red dye, used in Florentine workshops since the Middle Ages.
The Levigliani mine contains, albeit in very small quantities, pure mercury within the rock structure, a phenomenon observed in only two places in the world.
Abandoned in the 1970s, the mine underwent significant restoration in the 2000s for tourism, scientific research, and educational purposes.