The River Town of Pontemanco

❝Flowing water is the root of local fortune. The Biancolino Canal, a navigable waterway of medieval origin, created trade and industry in the small river town of Pontemanco. The village had always been involved in cereal production, and thanks to waterwheels driven by the current a busy industry for milling and processing sprang up. In the seventeenth century, noble Venetians influenced the town’s striking architectural appearance.❞

Lying on the banks of the Biancolino Canal, the historical centre of Pontemanco is a rare surviving example of a proto-industrial milling centre, once linked to other principal production localities in the territory of Padua by an efficient network of canals. Grinding began during the fourteenth century due to the Carraresi family, who built the first mill at Pontemanco, one of the oldest hydraulic works in northern Italy.
Flour production increased markedly during the times of the Venetian Republic, particularly when the Grimani family gained direct control of Pontemanco's waters and reinforced the milling complex. Over the years, the site underwent significant expansion. Still today, the main building has a working waterwheel, and, inside, houses a show space for cultural events of not only local interest, recollecting the proto-industrial traditions of the town.
The seventeenth century Villa Grimani Fortini was the cornerstone of the river town and, nearby, there is an oratory, and the modest dwellings of those who worked here. The oratory still maintains its original appearance and the silence inside powerfully evokes the atmosphere of the time of the building. The typical terraced houses were built for those employed in grinding, transportation of cereal and related activities: workers, smiths, carpenters, boatmen and horsemen. The slow but inexorable decline of water mills and river navigation led to the end of Pontemanco's productive reality, which ceased definitively during the 1970s.