I've been telling y'all from day one that this homeland of mine is incredibly varied and that there are many places that look nothing like the postcard image that so many people have in their head when they think about Tuscany. And, yet, some of these areas positively look alien, like literally out of this world. A few miles from the town where my father was born, the vistas you could see were so strange that people could only think about Hell. Up until a few decades ago, a trip on these roads would mean looking at boiling lakes, powerful bursts of stinking steam and an unmistakeable smell of rotten eggs. It took a French engineer and a Tuscan prince to figure out that you could use the power of the earth to extract precious minerals and, later, produce a lot of electricity. That valley that looked so blighted and cursed now produces almost a third of all the electricity needed by Tuscany without any pollution. The story of how this harsh land and its hardy people learned how to thrive in such a weird environment is quite fascinating. That's why this week What's Up Tuscany will bring you back to my father's land, the Val di Cecina, to tell you everything there is to know about the largest geothermal plant on the planet and the many quirky things of this remarkable valley.

If you listen to the full episode, you will learn how it took a geological oddity to create the steaming hot water lakes and the noisy geysers that used to terrify people and make them think that the entrance to Hell was around here. Then I will tell you the tale of the clever engineers that learned how to exploit this power to extract valuable materials and, later, produce a lot of clean energy. The latest technological developments allowed more than 10000 houses and small businesses to get cheap heating and hot water cutting drastically their CO2 emissions. If you're interested you can visit the small museum in Larderello and see how these remarkable plants actually work. Now the Devil's Valley has been tamed, with every pound of steam used to produce electricity but if you go around Larderello you can still find some places where you can have an idea of how this valley used to look back in the day. Etruscans and Romans used to love coming here to have hot baths and in Sasso Pisano you can still access for free these hot springs. They've been recently renovated and are a lot less crowded than Saturnia: here you can actually relax and enjoy the surrounding nature, rather than fighting with 10000 tourists.

The village itself is quite interesting, even if it was built just to house the workers of the power plant but if you want something more, just head to Pomarance. This mediaeval town hides a couple of little quirky museums, a living house where everything seems frozen in time at the end of the 19th century and an old palace where you can find ancient weapons and tools that were dug in the countryside. In the final chapter, then, I will point you to a couple excellent restaurants where you can have a great meal without breaking the bank. One of this places looks like it's stuck in the 1970s and is run by volunteers but if you go there you'll get a feel of genuine Tuscan cuisine and save a lot of money. This land looks nothing like Tuscany and is not easy to understand. Its people have that pride that comes out of surviving in a very harsh place but, if you get to know them a bit, you'll understand why they always try to come back. Even if my father was born here, I've always felt a bit of a foreigner but it's a great place to visit. You can't find anything similar anywhere else in Europe. If you give it a chance, you'll fall in love with this place.
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