Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the estate of Coltano, which then belonged to the royal family together with the estates of Tombolo and San Rossore, extended over 3000 acres in the vast plain between Pisa and Livorno, which had been focus of the first attempts to reclaim since the time of the Medici family. It was precisely because of its central position in respect to the peninsula and its marshy lands suitable the transmission of long waves - used at that time in telecommunications - that Marconi, in the early twentieth century, chose Coltano to build its own Radio Station. Thanks to the grant of about 114 hectares of land by the King Vittorio Emanuele III, on a hill called Poggio di Corniolo, the idea of the Centre began to be relized, but technical and bureaucratic difficulties slowed down the work between 1903 and 1911. The plant, consisting of two rectangular aerial pavilions known as "Colonial" and "Continental", supported by 16 masts made of metal and wood about 75 meters high, included two alternators of 200 kW - one driven by a three-phase motor, the other by a DC motor - current transformers carrying the voltage to 10,000 V and a big transmitter. The station, at that time the largest in Europe and one of the earliest in the world, tested in November 1910 with a message to Glace Bay in Canada, was put into service by the Royal Navy in November 1911, at the beginning of the Italo-Turkish war, establishing the first links with Massawa, in Eritrea.

At the end of World War I, following the increased traffic requirements and the evolution of technical knowledge, on the hill of Poggio di Corniolo another pavilion, 420 meters wide, was built for trans-continental communication, consisting of four antennas approximately 250 meters high. Located at a certain distance from the previous plant, in order to use both stations simultaneously without interference, the new plant was used by the Royal Navy to extend communications to vessels in navigation. The Centre, entrusted to the Company Italo Radio from 1924 to 1928, was rescued around 1930 at the behest of Costanzo Ciano, by the Ministry of Communications, under which it reached its period of peak. Unfortunately it was irreparably damaged during the World War II when its antennas were destroyed, leaving intact only the bases, still visible today. Only the "Palazzina Marconi" stood with little damage, but since it was never used again, it also suffered a slow and gradual process of abandonment.

There's a recent proposal to transform this old installation, along with a nearby Rai center abandoned since 1952, into a "Citadel of telecommunication" and a museum of radio, with the intention of thus preserving a valuable record of Italian glorious past.