The mining village of Montevecchio covers a vast area that includes residential and executive buildings, plants, landfills and wooded areas.
The Montevecchio mine, particularly rich in resources and lead-zinc metal filaments, was used at least starting in the mid-19th century with concessions given to the Montevecchio and Pertusola companies. The activity continued between ups and downs until it ceased in 1991. The mining facilities are divided into the Levant and West sectors separated by the Genna Serapis pass, where the central nucleus of the town is located, which concentrates all the symbolic buildings of the mine (management, hospital, school, church, after-work), built in different styles according to the different periods of construction. We can therefore observe references to the cultured architecture of the past, the use of Liberty, especially in decorations, a simple and functional language, derived from Rationalism.
The management, completed in 1877, houses the chapel of Santa Barbara laterally with a curious combination of different functions. The sober exterior of the building corresponds to a tall and exuberant courtyard with a “Doric” porch, where the polychrome paintings, with mining themes, the perforated railings, the lintel or arched openings, the fountain with a bearded mask, anticipate the extraordinary meeting room: a vast environment turned into a pavilion and decorated with trompe-l'oeil paintings that repeat floral friezes, shells, bouquets of flowers and bucranes, grotesques, birds. On the blue background, the coats of arms bearing pickaxes and mining tools are evident, with a clear reference to the representative function of the building.
The church also incorporates decorative elements of eclectic inspiration, which are repeated in other buildings, built in later periods.
The hospital, built in 1885 and then modified, is a sturdy building with classicist references, located at the bottom of the tree-lined square under a high rock wall.
From 1938 to 1942, the building that houses the school and the after-work, the geological office, were built, all located near the main square; the Righi village, consisting of several building blocks arranged on different levels, upstream of the Levante-West cable car station; the Francesco Sartori hotel for bachelor workers, which stands with several floors above ground on a trachite base, in a particularly suggestive position on the main road to the Sanna washing machine.
The old bedrooms, intended for miners without families, date back to the nineteenth-century phase of the settlement with rooms arranged in rows. Also worth mentioning are the powerful structures linked to the mining activity of the Levante sector, inserted in a suggestive landscape significantly transformed by man with the heaps of waste that clearly mark the environment: here, next to the washrooms and service facilities, are visible the nineteenth-century castles of Pozzo San Giovanni in the construction site of Piccalinna and Pozzo Sant'Antonio, which have neo-medieval forms, and the reinforced concrete castle of Pozzo Sartori.
Each well corresponds to the residential part that includes simple single-storey terraced rooms, each completed by a fireplace, reserved for bachelor workers, and villages for families built at different times and now abandoned.
The mine is part of the Geominerary, Historical and Environmental Park of Sardinia and can be visited divided into the following five routes, with different characteristics: Direction route, Sant'Antonio route, Officine route, Piccalinna route, underground Galleria Anglosarda route.

History of studies
The mine is included in the main works on industrial archeology in Sardinia.

Bibliography
F. Masala, “Mining architecture in Sardinia between revivals and eclecticism”, in Man and the Mines in Sardinia, edited by T.K. Kirova, Cagliari, Edizioni della Torre, 1993, pp. 120-123; S. Mezzolani-A. Simoncini, Landscapes and Architecture of Mines. Sardo Photographic Archive, Nuoro, 1993, pp. 88-116;
F. Masala, “Mining settlements. Forms, Architectures, Problems”, in The founding cities in Sardinia, edited by A. Lino, Cagliari, Cuec, 1998, pp. 46-48;
F. Masala, Architecture from the Unification of Italy at the end of the 20th century. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, sheet 50;
Eclecticism and mining. European reflections in Sardinian architecture and society between '800 and '900, curated by M.B. Lai-P. Olive-G. Usai, exhibition catalog, MiBAC, [2004], pp. 23-44.

How to get there
The village of Montevecchio can be reached both from Guspini (via the SP to Funtanazza and Torre dei Corsari) and from Arbus (via the SC that crosses Genna Sciria and the Righi village).