Valley of the devil
The Devil's Valley (Italian: Valle del Diavolo ) is an approx. 200 km² geothermally active area in central Tuscany that belongs to the municipality of Pomarance . It has been known since ancient times and has housed one of the world's largest geothermal power plants since 1905 .
location
Surrounded by the Colline Metallifere , the geothermal fields are located on today's Strada Statale SS 439 about halfway between Massa Marittima in the south and Volterra in the north, about 30 km from both corner points in the upper Cecina valley. The valley itself begins at Castelnuovo di Val di Cecina , where the 18 km long Torrente Possera rises and follows its course over the centers of Larderello and Montecerboli to the western valleys of San Dalmazio , where the 5 km long Racquese rises. The valley spends most of it in the southeastern municipality of Pomarance.
Geothermal energy
A few hundred meters underground, volcanic magma boils the groundwater and pushes it under enormous pressure to the surface of the earth, where it shoots out in rhythmic steam fountains ( soffioni ). In other places boiling water seeps out and forms large puddles of mud ( lagoni ).
The water contains boron and sulfur .
The name of the area goes back to the Middle Ages. A passage in Dante's first book of the Divina Commedia - Inferno - describes the "steam that the earth has in its belly". The lines suggest that the Florentine knew this area. The hissing of the steam fountains, the bubbling and the smell of hydrogen sulfide of the muddy pools may have inspired the poet. This is how the entrance to hell was imagined in those times.
History / use of geothermal energy
According to Roman sources, even the Etruscans extracted boron from the hot pools, which they could use as medicine and to glaze their ceramics.
In the Middle Ages, traders from Volterra sold sulfur, alum and vitriol.
Boron extraction lost its importance in the late Middle Ages, until the Habsburg Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II (HRR) , took an interest in it again in the 19th century and described the area again. François Jacques de Larderel , an industrialist of French origin, developed a process for the extraction of boric acid based on preliminary studies by Uberto Francesco Hoefer , the patron of the Tuscan pharmacies and to that extent a consultant at the court of the Grand Duke. He founded the place named after him Larderello.
The change in use of geothermal energy from chemistry to electricity generation took place in 1905. In that year, the world's first geothermal power plant, which has been operated by ENEL since 1962 , was built. Its cooling towers and winding pipelines for evacuating the steam have shaped the landscape of the Devil's Valley since then. For tourists passing by on the Strada Statale, the contrast to the medieval backdrop of the town of Castelnuovo di Val di Cecina creates a bizarre anachronism. Associations with Land Art creations have been described in travel literature.
The 875 m high Ala del Diavolo (= wing of the devil) in the local area of Castelnuovo di Val di Cecina opens a wide panorama over the area.
The Geothermal Museum in Larderello, Museo della Geotermia, in the Palazzo de 'Larderel provides information about the lively geothermal energy in the entire volcanically active region.
literature
- Touring Club Italiano : Toscana , Milan 2003, ISBN 88-365-2767-1 , p. 485 f.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Official website of the Sistema Informativo Ambientale della Regione Toscana (SIRA) on the Possera River, accessed on April 6, 2013 (ital.)
- ↑ a b TCI
- ↑ Official website of the Sistema Informativo Ambientale della Regione Toscana (SIRA) on the Racquese River, accessed on April 6, 2013 (ital.)
- ↑ Streckfuss translation of Divinia Commedia, Inferno, at Wikisource
- ↑ With satellite image, also as .pdf. There are information sheets in German in the museum
Coordinates: 43 ° 14 ' N , 10 ° 53' E