MuseumMAGMA Museo delle Arti in Ghisa nella Maremma

Welcome to MAGMA, Maremma’s museum of cast iron art!

An interactive and multimedial structure, this museum tells the technological, artistic and human story of the metalworking industry of Follonica. It’s located in the so-called Città fabbrica or Factory City, since all the buildings in the area were at one time connected to the metalworking industry with material from the island of Elba.

The factory itself closed permanently in 1960, but it reached its maximum development in the 1800’s with Grand Duke Leopold II of Lorena. In the VI Century BC only a few kilometers away from here, the Etruscans were already working iron!

In the XIX century, an artistic foundry was producing true works of art. The MAGMA Museum is located in the San Ferdinando Furnace, the most ancient building, and it’s a magnificent sample of industrial archeology. As we enter, we are welcomed by the cast iron bust of Leopold II, and in the rooms that follow, the wooden models of urban furnishing and decorations for the Gate and the Church (the two symbols of Follonica). As we walk the rooms, in a marvelous lattice of spaces alternating open and closed portions, we climb to the higher floor where multimedia stations offer assistance and information through oral testimony, films,  and interactive resources. In this station the metalworkers present their lives to us with virtual technology; in the Etruscan section, an animated cartoon and a diorama tell us what metalworking was like in the VI Century BC. Before descending into the basement, a train trip makes us discover all about cast iron in the world. The basement is the most suggestive of the spaces in the museum: noises, sounds and images accompany us as we enter a factory where a couple of cast iron dolphins are being welded.

We can also virtually meet and interview those who worked for a time at the factory, and as a concluding activity, the melting game will test if we are as good with the melting cycle as a foundry master.

Thank you for the visit, we’ll be waiting for you at the museum!