Premium Featured Accommodation

Industry and Agriculture in Tuscany Italy

With regard to industry, mining, though sharply declining compared to a few decades ago, is still of some importance: pyrites in the Grosseto area (used in the production of sulphuric acid), lignite (Valdarno), lead (Campiglia Marittima), alabaster (Volterra) and notably marble (Apuan Alps). The iron ore seams (Island of Elba) and mercury deposits (Mount Amiata) are no longer worked. Some electricity is produced, nearly entirely of thermal origin, more than one third of it from the exploitation of borax hot springs (Larderello).

Industry includes the metallurgical (Piombino, Leghorn, Florence, S. Giovanni Valdarno), engineering (Florence, Pontedera, Pistoia, Arezzo), chemical (Rosignano Solvay, Leghorn), textile (Prato, Florence, Empoli), food (Sansepolcro), printing (Florence), tanning (S. Croce sull'Arno) and glass, making (Empoli) sectors. Craft industries flourish all over this region (faiences, lace, rush-weaving, wrought-iron).

In the services sector, banking (Siena, Florence) and especially commerce and tourism (the Versilia seaside resorts, many art cities) are important.

The road and railway networks are well developed for regional circulation (facilitated by the wide valleys and the broken nature of the Tuscan Apennine groups) as well as national communications. Important highways and motorways (Autostrada del Sole, Florence-Pisa, Genoa-Leghorn, Parma-La Spezia) and main railway lines (Bologna-Rome, coastal line Genoa-Rome) cross this region.

The only busy ports are Leghorn (lines to Sardinia, Corsica and the Tuscan archipelago) and Piombino (linking the nearby Island of Elba). The major domestic airports are Pisa San Giusto and Florence Peretola.

Articles