The San Giovanni mine is located on the mountain of the same name, near Bindua, a hamlet in the municipality of Iglesias. Next to the mine stands the Normann village, built to house the miners who worked in the mining site nearby.
The site, just like the entire area, was known even to the Romans who dug wells in search of argentiferous galena. Industrial mining started around the middle of the XIX century, when the Gonnesa Mining Company Limited was given the concession of the branch known as Santa Barbara.
However, in 1904 the Pertusola company succeeded them and provided the site with modern industrial buildings. In the same years, the company started building the Normann village; arranged into a hierarchical system with homes for the workforce downstream and those upstream for managers and employees.
After production was interrupted during the world wars, in 1952 while digging, some miners uncovered a cave, later called Santa Barbara. The extensive underground cave with elliptical shape is completely covered with barite and aragonite mineral crystals.
