Caltanissetta Radio Transmitter

When talking about the tallest structures in the world, one often thinks of skyscrapers above modern cities, but radio transmitters in remote locations also reach dizzying heights.

Italy is famous for its many architectural marvels built over the millennia, but its tallest building (a sleek, modern structure in Milan) is only 758 feet tall. The title of the tallest overall structure goes to a radio transmitter on the Sant’Anna hill near the town of Caltanissetta, in Sicily. (In between the two are a number of transmitters and power plant chimneys.) This antenna has a height of 938 feet, and was built by the national public broadcasting company, RAI, between 1949 and 1951. At the time it was also the tallest structure in all of Europe, until 1965 when a transmitting station in the United Kingdom was inaugurated.

The Caltanissetta Radio Transmitter is a guyed mast and was used for broadcast on long, medium, and short waves until it was shut down in 2004 due to the high costs of maintenance, and was set to be demolished. To avoid the demolition of the structure, the municipality of Caltanissetta bought the transmitter and the terrain, to turn the area into a park.