Population: 31,418
Surface area: 145.63 sq. km
Altitude: 111 m. above sea level

Carbonia was built during the Fascist era and was inaugurated by Mussolini in 1938.
The new town was designed to cater for an increase in the coal mining activity in the area. The town has the regular structure of carefully planned urban centres and the buildings reflect the style of the times with semi-detached houses with gardens, arranged in groups in long, symmetrical rows.
The main public buildings, in trachyte, date back to the foundation of the town and are concentrated in Piazza Roma, the large, central square.

Visitors should not miss the settlement of Monte Sirai and the Archaeological Museum of Villa Sulcis. The materials exhibited in the Archaeological Museum of Villa Sulcis cover a period in history which goes from the VI millennium B.C (5548 B.C according to the laboratory analysis carried out on the obsidian), up to the Byzantine era
(VI - VII century A.D.).

The exhibits include instruments in use in prehistoric times, such as lithic weapons and earthenware, but also objects linked to religious burials from the Neolithic period (5500- 2500 B.C.), the era which witnessed the working of the first metals (2500 - 1800 B.C.),
right up until the various archaeological finds which bear witness to the Nuragic period
(1600 - 500 B.C.).