The city's industrial vocation is closely linked to coal and is also at the origin of its rise and its misfortune: an autarchic city par excellence, it reveals the hopes and contradictions of the Twenty Years. In the immediate post-war period, the mining crisis highlighted the very serious social and economic problems, which more recently led the city to assume the role of a particularly important service center for Sulcis.
Carbonia, a typical settlement at the mouth of a mine, is perhaps the most important and ambitious of the founding cities of fascism and was inaugurated on December 18, 1938, after less than a year of work.
The foundation plan, drawn up by Ignazio Guidi and Cesare Valle, with the collaboration of Gustavo Pulitzer Finali, provided for a population of 20000 inhabitants, then increased by 35000 in the expansion plan, due to Eugenio Montuori, who were now the first two active designers in Ethiopia for the Addis Ababa plan.
The center of the city is the square divided into a system of spaces that gather around the central nucleus, containing the main public buildings as many monuments of the medieval city: the town hall, designed by Enrico Del Debbio, the littoria tower and the after-work of Pulitzer Finali, the posts due to Raffaello Fagnoni, the church of Guidi and Valle. They gradually slope towards the green of the mine director's villa, designed by Eugenio Montuori and today it has become the public structure that houses the Archaeological Museum.
Among the public buildings, which oscillate between classicist simplifications and medieval suggestions, the church, the hotel for employees and the elementary school, today classical high school, deserve special mention for different reasons.
The main church is named after San Ponziano, pope of early Christianity condemned “ad metalla” in the Sulcis mines and then hired as protector of the coal city. The building is also quite massive due to the use of trachyte, both in the tall bell tower modeled on that of Aquileia, and in the façade interrupted only by a rose window, which contained a window painted by Filippo Figari, lost during the Second World War.
The hotel, built to a design by Eugenio Montuori, is located on one side, not far from the central square. It consists of two blocks of different heights and arranged in an L shape and stands out for the sequence of large balconies protected by roll-up curtains, which are also repeated on the short side. The most unique aspect are the interior coverings in Carrara marble, which fit perfectly into the autarchic logic of the use of Italian or locally produced materials, like trachyte, used as a base and for the supporting structures of many buildings in the city of coal.
The former elementary school, also in Montuori, is located in Via Brigata Sassari and is divided into a large space on several bodies arranged in a U-shape with another perpendicular arm. Despite the alterations and adaptations, it is still possible to observe the rationalist line of the building, especially in the connection with the lower body, once a refectory and now a gym, connected with an atrium now closed by windows.
The criteria for the distribution of residences follow social and labor hierarchies in the mining industry and are progressively farther from the center. They are houses or semi-detached houses reserved for officials, which increase in the volume and quantity of apartments, intended for employees, workers and miners.
The houses have different types and follow models proposed by the Azienda Carboni Italiani, a public law body, which managed Carbonia, using the abundant use of local stone and a minimum use of iron, given the autarchic economy of the time. In fact, floors are generally supported by brick vaults.
We go from two-story houses with accommodation for four families with independent entrances and a family garden to building blocks for employees, comprising 24 to 48 apartments, with simple openings cut out in the facades and balconies flush with the wall.

Bibliography
V. Maltese, “Carbonia 18-XII-1938", A. XVII”, in The Italian Economy, 1938;
“Carbonia, the new city of Sardinia”, in Architecture, 9, 1940, pp. 435-452;
R. Mariani, Fascism and “new cities”, Milan, Feltrinelli, 1976; R. Martinelli-L. Nuti, “The New Cities of the Twenty Years from Mussolinia to Carbonia”, in The Founding Cities, Venice, Marsilio, 1978, pp. 271-93; I. Delogu, Carbonia. Utopia and project, Rome, 1988;
M. Pintus, “The designed city: Carbonia”, in Man and the Mines in Sardinia, edited by T.K. Kirova, Cagliari, Edizioni della Torre, 1993, pp. 137-152;
R. Pisano, “Carbonia and Sulcis: the events of a population”, in The founding cities in Sardinia, edited by A. Lino, Cagliari, Cuec, 1998, pp. 148-162; F. Masala, Architecture from the Unification of Italy to the End of the 20th Century. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, sheets 114-118; Italian Foundation Cities 1928-1942, Latina, Twecento, 2005, pp. 261-271.