the sources of Mount Amiata
book with us at Ermicciolo in Vivo d'Orcia: in direct contact with nature!
the source of Ermicciolo
Located right inside the Ermicciolo Park in Vivo d’Orcia, the source stays in its natural element: the forest. On the level of the square, you enter a gallery just over 80 meters long, where contact with water is direct and no barrier separates the visitor from the impetuous force of the water that comes out of the rocks. The roar of the waterfall and the humidity of the air are the sensations that will remain etched in the memory.
The Aqueduct of Vivo draws water from the spring of Ermicciolo, located in the Vivo d’Orcia area. In 1895 the Municipality of Siena designed the Aqueduct intended to solve the lack of water that the city and the surrounding area absolutely needed. The source of Ermicciolo, where the project started, had a flow rate of 200 l / s. In 1908, the work began and ended in 1914, with a fundamental importance for most of the region.
Already in the twelfth century St. Romualdo had chosen the Vivo area to found an Hermitage, describing this enchanted place as “wild and magnificent, a small hill stretched on the border between the beech and chestnut kingdom, a few flat meters near a narrow sinuous, sudden, from which two large and overwhelming pools of frozen water sprang with thunder”
the source of Santa Fiora
A few tens of meters from the “Peschiera” and then from the historic village of Santa Fiora, the gates of the longest sources of the mountain open: a tunnel of 620 meters which first follow a long pipe, then the course of the water captured by the mountain and protected by windows. The tunnel that you go through leads to a unique spectacle: the escape of water from volcanic rocks, with an average flow rate of 300 l / s.
The Fiora river originates from the Grosseto side of Mount Amiata, in addition to the municipality of Santa Fiora, the territories of the splendid towns of Sorano, Pitigliano and Manciano. The river is the largest waterway that originates on the slopes of Mount Amiata. Its sources are the most important in southern Tuscany, they contribute to the supply of drinking water throughout the Province of Grosseto, but also in upper Lazio.
The Fiora Aqueduct was built starting in the 1930s, at the same time as the population increase that occurred in the province of Grosseto. The purpose of the infrastructure was, in fact, to bring large quantities of water from the mountain area of the Amiata (which has always been very rich) to the plain and the coastal strip.