This is La Pernance Penna which is in the town of Sampieri. Now Sampieri has a pretty good beach which is why we were there, but it also have this ruin of factory, or furnance, which in itself is pretty amazing.
It is not old, at least not by Italian standards - it was built in 1912 - are it's a brick and tile factory. In it's herday it produced about 10,000 of them a day - and yes I cannot imagine the heat, given that Sicily in Summer is certainly hot enough already without a blast furnance operating.
La Fornace did used to rise on three floors, and the main body has a basilica plan to resemble more of an ancient church than a factory. For these reasons, in fact, Vittorio Sgarbi (an Italian Art Critic) called it a “secular basilica by the sea”.
It place near the sea meant to exported most of it's bricks to Libya and Malta.
or at least it did until 1924 when an arsonist burnt it 'down' - A suspicious fire in Southern Italy, hmmmm nothing odd about that. Since then it's been getting more and more 'ruinous' as nature takes over 'inside' a the salty sea air eats away at the stone, but it still stands impressive in it's scale.