Solar powered cableway turns 100

| Mon, 08/18/2008 - 09:20

The world's only completely solar-powered cableway turns 100 on Tuesday.

The Montenero funicular railway at the Tuscan city of Livorno was unveiled on August 19 1908.

Initially powered by steam, its engines turned to coal, diesel and electricity before it went solar in the 1980s.

The cableway takes tourists and pilgrims to a religious shrine cut into the rocks more than 100m above the coastal city.

The Sanctuary of Montenero is dedicated to Our Lady of the Graces, the patron saint of Tuscany.

It is famous for a gallery decorated with ex-voti mainly connected to stories of miraculous sea rescues.

English Romantic poet and militant atheist Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned when his small boat went down in a storm off Livorno in 1822.

Livorno is offering a month of cut-price deals to mark the cableway's anniversary.

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