Rosignano Solvay (Provinz von Livorno, Toskana)

Rosignano Solvay is a thriving coastal town, part of the Municipality of Rosignano Marittimo; it differs from it in that R. Marittimo is located on a hill at a height of 150 meters and now has fewer inhabitants than the coastal town. Currently, in fact, Rosignano Solvay represents the most populous and active hamlet of the Municipality, but before 1914 in this plain there were only a few farmhouses and a lot of scrub and wood. In fact, life took place above all in the centers located on the hill in a more favorable position being the flat areas infested by malaria.
The turning point came at the beginning of the 1900s: in less than a hundred years it has gone from a few tens of people to more than 16,000 inhabitants. This rapid development is almost entirely attributable to the construction of the factory by the Belgian Solvay Company which in 1914 installed the first plants for the production of soda. The choice by the Belgian company to build an industrial plant in this uninhabited plain stemmed from the specific characteristics of this area: the flat terrain, the proximity of limestone quarries and the River Fine as a water resource, the availability of the railway, the axis of the Via Aurelia and the Via Emilia, the presence of the sea.
After the creation of the factory came the construction of the "Solvay Village": the houses, a series of services of various kinds, from the shops to the cinema-theater, the recreational club, the schools, the hospital, the sports field, according to a precise and modern urban plan: the straight avenues are intersected perpendicularly by the streets shaded by pine trees; the buildings, of varying size depending on the function, but also on the social role of the inhabitants of the time, are all in the same style, using exposed gray bricks.
Rosignano Solvay and the Solvay Village owe their name to the Belgian engineer Ernest Solvay who had founded this industrial plant.
At R. Solvay, however, things are not all pink and white: the pollutants discharged into the sea from the factory have damaged the environment and consequently the health of the local population.
Today the economy of the village is not based only on the factory but also on tourism, thanks to the wide beaches and the recent tourist port "Cala de 'Medici" with its 650 berths.

Die Stadt hat außer dem besonderen „Solvay Village“, das vage an die Erfahrungen der New Towns aus städtebaulicher Sicht erinnert, nicht viel zu bieten. Die Aufmerksamkeit der Touristen wird durch den (etwas perversen) Charme des breiten weißen Sandstrandes angezogen, der sich zwischen R. Solvay und Vada erstreckt