A prominent tower stands like a sentinel over a majestic ocean panorama where steamships once moored alongside a cliff to await receiving their cargo.
Mounted on a rock shore, this abandoned Italian port is a marvel of 20th-century engineering—not to mention a perch with a view like no other. Porto Flavia, located on the southwest coast of Sardinia, features a photogenic front with a tunnel laying 52 feet over the lapping sea. The interior of what once was a mining hub extends deep into the rock and reaches up atop the cliff.
In its day, Porto Flavia was a pioneering achievement of industry, yet today the harbor has fallen into disuse and become a place mainly for tourists. Beginning a century ago, the story of Porto Flavia had more to do with mining efficiency and cutting costs than panoramic ocean sightseeing.
Fuels, metals, and minerals—coal, zinc, lead, sulphur, barium, silver, and other metals—in those days, were being mined from nearby Masua, in the Sulcis area of the Italian island of Sardinia, as they had since the 1600s. That industry didn’t really pick up until the 1900s, though the extraction was tedious and expensive as ore was transported in wicker baskets onto Sardinian ships called bilancelles docked at Masua. The bilancelles were manned by sailors from the isle of Carloforte, 19 miles (30 kilometers) to the west.
The task was laborious and dangerous; the ships could hold up to 30 tons, were often loaded to capacity, and could sink in stormy seas, particularly when they stowed lead. Once the cargo reached Carloforte, if the weather was bad, it could take as long as two months to load a single steamship before it set sail for foundries in France, Belgium, or Germany.
So it was that a Belgian mining corporation sought to expedite this business and in 1922 hired engineer Cesare Vecelli to work on a solution. In the most novel approach, Vecelli surveyed the rocky Sardinian coast, northwest of Masua, and found what would become a port for loading ore directly to the steamships, which would moor along a vertical, rocky cliff. The sea here happened to be deep enough so ships would not run aground. This was to be Porto Flavia
Ore would be transported to a place atop the cliff at Porta Flavia, where an entrance would lead to the upper of two long tunnels, stacked one over the other, both running parallel 2,000 feet (60 meters) lengthwise toward the ocean. Through a depository and conveyance system, they would move ore through the cliff and see it loaded directly into the hold of a waiting steamship below.
Construction of the harbor was completed within a short, two-year period, from 1922 to 1924, thanks to a team of miners who were experts in climbing and the use of dynamite, who achieved that by disregarding safety standards. Amazingly, there were no deaths—or none that were reported. The task was made more challenging by the fact that there were few cavities to provide cover from explosions. To solve that problem, they dug trenches at regular intervals along the excavation to offer protection.
They began construction by blasting and drilling atop the cliff, 121 feet (37 meters) above the sea, excavating with explosives and mechanical drills what would become the upper tunnel. Here, ore from mining would be received, shuttled inside via an electric train, and dropped to the lower tunnel via a gallery of vertical storage reservoirs.
Next, using ropes and hanging from the cliffside, they blasted and drilled what would become the lower tunnel. By excavating in the reverse direction this time, they were able to speed things up by dumping the waste rubble directly into the ocean below.
Once the two tunnels were complete, they were connected vertically by nine enormous storage reservoirs, each measuring 13 to 26 feet (4 to 8 meters) in diameter and 66 feet (20 meters) high. These were excavated from the bottom up, allowing them to remove the rubble into the sea again, but it was immensely dangerous work.
These reservoirs ran along either side of the lower tunnel and constituted a gallery within the upper level. Above, there were depository hatches where ore would be dropped down, and below there were unloading hatches that fed a conveyor belt that ran the length of the tunnel.
This conveyor belt would carry the metals and minerals toward the opening, where a ship would wait, before depositing them onto a slightly lower, extendable conveyor belt that spanned the 52-foot gap from the cliffside; the ore would cross the gap and travel down a vertical shaft into the ship’s hold. This extendable belt was covered by a steel casing to prevent zinc oxide minerals from blowing away in the wind. Thus, the port was able to move 500 metric tons of ore per hour to each waiting steamship.
After construction was completed, the owner of the mining corporation had a false front with a tower and arch doorway built out of concrete—not so much for function as prestige. Then the designer, Vecelli, obtained special permission to name the whole operation after his newborn daughter and the port gained its name, Porto Flavia, as its inscription attests to today.
Once the port’s mining operations got underway, the cost of production was cut by up to 70 percent. This was good for the mining corporation; unfortunately for the sailors of Carloforte, however, many were left unemployed, hurting the local economy. The upshot was that wages at Porto Flavia were higher than those at the mine and working conditions were better because of the port’s functional powder removal system, good venting, natural light, as well as top-class machinery. There were lethal accidents however; a team known as Squadra della Morte (Death Squad) was called to perform the dangerous task of entering the reservoirs, hanging by ropes and using pickaxes and poles to dislodge ore that had gotten stuck on the rock walls.
Activity at Porto Flavia slowed during the 1960s as local mining activity diminished, and it finally closed down in the 1990s when mineral production at Masua ceased entirely. Today, the unique port with a prominent seaside panorama is a UNESCO-protected site and has become a popular destination where visitors can explore the region’s mining and industrial history on guided tours.
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