High white clouds of steam, boric acid fumaroles and boiling water springs gushing out of bare ground, sometimes white, red or black: this is what you can see in the "Devil’s Valley", the area in which Larderello is located and which could not have a more apt name.
An area already famous for its characteristics at the time of Dante Alighieri, who is said to have drawn inspiration from it for the Inferno of his Divine Comedy.
Imagine at that time, without the massive human intervention of today, how dark and mysterious the landscape could really be. In some places you might even think you were on the surface of the moon.
This village takes its name from a French engineer and entrepreneur, François Jacques de Larderel, who first had the intuition, in 1827, to extract boric acid from the mud of the so-called "lagoni" (see picture below). The strong deforestation due to the increasing use of wood convinced de Larderel to directly exploit the natural steam to evaporate the water and obtain the boric acid.After the birth and development of the boraciferous plant in the early twentieth century Larderello became the first case in the world of exploitation of geothermal energy to produce electricity. The work went on digging new wells and building cooling towers. Until the construction of the power plant by Enel, which takes the steam directly from the subsoil, transforming it into energy through turbines and alternators.
