Coniolo: sights, history and trails

Coat of arms of blue, truncated in silver band, at the head of the silver mastius, walled and closed of black, at the mountain of six peaks on the tip. Exterior ornaments from the Municipality.^[4]

In the last hundred years since 1921 the resident population has halved.

Inhabitants registered^[5]

The Ethnographic Museum of the Mines "Coniolo Il Paese che visse due volte", located in Coniolo Municipal Palace,^[6] recounts the epic of cement marin mines, begun in the second half of the XIX century and continued for about one hundred years, leaving on the territory strong signs and still legible that tell a story that belongs to the current and future generations.

The history of the country was marked by a treasured cultivation of the deep-sea, under the ancient town of Coniolo Basso. The first lesions to the buildings appeared in 1905 and the phenomenon continued until 1922: eighty-four houses, the church and the castle, were lost forever.^[7] The inhabitants did not demoralize, dismantled the old houses and rebuilt them on the site of the present town of Coniolo Bricco. This is why the museum is called "Coniolo, the country that lived twice".^[8]

The museum reproduces within it a section of cement marin mine faithfully reconstructed also in the noises and work carried out by men, women and children who, from nine to thirteen years, could already become miners. The plastics of the ancient town of Coniolo are musealized, the detail of the mines, the tools used and the means of transport in tunnel, on land, for air and on the river Po.^[9] The collection is divided into thematic sections, where authentic objects and vintage photographs are placed:^[8]

• the extractive activity open from the Roman era until 1884;
• The first tools used, derived from other locally popular crafts;
• the start of mining crops in depth, following the restoration of river transport on the Po river (1884) and the settlement of cement plants at the railway station Morano sul Po (1887);
• the development of the mining area “Palazzina Molino Zerbi”, with about 40 Km of tunnels dug in the hill;
• the evolution of extractive activity;
• the activities related to industrial mining induced;
• female and child labour: according to the law of the time children from 9 to 13 years could work in the mine, provided they were healthy.

The hill of Coniolo is expressly mentioned in the reflections contained in the book The craft of living by Cesare Pavese on 3 August 1946.