Campo Tizzoro, the utopia made real

Campo Tizzoro is the most recent hamlet, but its origin is extraordinary. In that area, until the beginning of the ‘900, there were only cultivated fields and a small ironworks called Malconsiglio. However, the construction of the industrial factory of the S.M.I. Società Metallurgica Italiana, producing ammunition, radically changed the area and the whole mountain.
Work began in June 1910 and the factory was inaugurated on 30 July 1911. In a single year, the factory, the houses for the workers and the hotel for the foreigners were built, thereby creating the village of Campo Tizzoro. From that moment on, the factory became the real engine of development and a tireless driving force for the Pistoia Mountains, which grew with it: as the factory expanded, so did the village, with a unique harmony.
The factory’s management and ownership cared about the well-being of their employees and actively tried to meet all their needs. New neighbourhoods were built in Pian del Merlo, Isola and Villaggio Orlando, named in honor of the factory owner. They also built houses for the managers and owners of the factory and, above all, schools and kindergarten for the employees’ children. The S.M.I. schools soon became an excellence that allowed not only to educate the future employees of the plant but also to form workers that were required and demanded by the largest factories in Europe.
To consider Campo Tizzoro as a proper village, the only thing missing was a church. The factory took care of it.
At first, the initiative was taken by the then parish priest of Pontepetri, who immediately involved the management of the factory, sure of their collaboration and solid help. Indeed, the response was not long in coming and, thanks to the funding and support of S.M.I. and the Orlando family, the works for the construction of the church began in a very short time. The project was originally entrusted to Carlo Ottavio, an illustrious Florentine architect who died before being able to see his work completed. He was, thus, followed by Amedeo Lavini who completed it. The church was solemnly inaugurated on 23 August 1940, an event that was given great prominence even at a national level.
However, what most characterizes Campo Tizzoro, arousing wonder and amazement even in the most inattentive observer, is the presence of the gigantic reinforced concrete ogives, visible along the state road crossing the village. The ogives are nothing more than the entrances to the underground refuges of the S.M.I., built before the Second World War to protect the workers and their families from bombing. Indeed, it was believed that Campo Tizzoro would have been a sensitive target, so the factory urged to rescue its people. Fortunately, Campo Tizzoro did not suffer heavy bombardments, unlike other mountain villages, and the reasons for this are not yet entirely clear. Nonetheless, its inhabitants felt the weight of the conflict and they resisted remaining confined underground even for 40 consecutive days. Every year to commemorate 1944, certainly the hardest year experienced by the population, Campo Tizzoro ’44 is organized, an event of historical re-enactment in which you can see and understand what happened in that dramatic period.
For a long time, this village seemed to be a utopia realized by the efforts of the factory and its workers and it appeared to most like a daydream. Unfortunately, even the most beautiful fairy tales sometimes end, and the factory slowly declined, eventually closing at the beginning of the new millennium.
The memory of the factory is still very vivid both in those who lived it, daily and for decades, and in the S.M.I. Museum and Refuges, where you can retrace the life of the factory and of the whole village of Campo Tizzoro and where you can also visit the evocative underground huts.