Near the hamlet of Villanova della Cartera in San Michele al Tagliamento (Venice) is a recently restructured example of Veneto’s industrial archaeology: the former mill and paper factory of Villanova, which gave the village its name.
The building on the river Tagliamento, which used to have a mill to its right, was transformed in the 1600s into a papermill by the Barbarigo family, owners of the nearby feud of Fraforeano, who believed it to be a good place to start a paper production business, at the time a flourishing industry in the province.
The papermill was also home to the maestro cartaro, who trained and managed the workers, and his family. For a while, the building worked as both a mill and a papermill, but business began to dwindle from the mid-1700s.
In the early 1900s, Vittorio Biaggini transformed the papermill into a hydroelectric power station, which was active until post WWII supplying electricity to the surrounding villages thanks to a waterfall of 2.5 m and the turbines that are still visible today. The building’s output is powered by the Roggia del Molino, an ancient tributary of the Tagliamento that has been modified over the centuries to exploit the difference in water levels.
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