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Climate and energy transition

City - 24.01.2006

Village fights darkness with mirror

Viganella, a village in the North of Italy, faces a rather odd problem. The village is built at the bottom of a very steep side Alpine valley. The southern side of the valley is so sheer that from 11 November until 2 February not a single ray of sunlight falls on Viganella.

Mayor Pierfranco Midali has come up with a creative idea to cope with this problem. He believes that a motorised mirror about five meters wide could track the sun, always reflecting it into the square. He already hired an architect to draw the plans.

'On a clear day this would produce five hours of sunlight in the piazza even in mid-December", he said.

Unfortunately, the regional government is not willing to invest the 100,000 euros needed to build the mirror. Still, the project can already count on a lot of international media attention and support from various private and public organisations. So maybe one day the winter sun will shine on Viganella.

The village of Viganella