magazine

​​The art of milling is one of the most important and significant moments of Western civilization, also due to the multiple social, political, economic and technological interests it has aroused. In reality, the historic mill (both water and wind), in its most complete expressions, constitutes one of the greatest technological inventions not only of antiquity, but also and above all of the medieval and modern ages, a period in which it presents itself as a wonderful all-purpose machine when considered in its various and differentiated uses in which it comes to operate. Countless testimonies have been spread everywhere by this production machine, clearly demonstrating how the mill was not only a significant architectural manifestation inserted into the urban or rural scene, but also a true operator of economic, civil, social and territorial transformations, somehow and forever marking some aspects of European civilization. In a country that consumed (and consumes) large quantities of cereals and grains of various kinds like Italy, "water, millstones and flour" had to complement each other and find their privileged home in the mill. It is therefore no surprise that the prevailing cereal diet of Italians has led in past centuries to a widespread and widespread diffusion of the mill, in its most diverse types, throughout the national territory, at least until the end of the nineteenth century, when the modernization of the grinding mechanisms brought about above all by the introduction of rolling mills, It immediately resulted in faster flour production and a rapid transformation of the artisanal mill into a multi-storey mill-factory, capable of feeding entire inhabited centres. ​From that period onwards, the old millers were progressively forced to abandon their old work, which was no longer competitive, giving rise to a progressive abandonment of the mills of the past, often thus also decreeing their structural end due to the consequent degradation. This "Illustrated Itinerary Through the Ancient Italian Mills" therefore aims to remove from oblivion some of the most significant examples of Italian milling art, drawing them in adequate numbers from all Italian regions. The selection sought to provide as complete a picture as possible of the diverse construction and technological solutions implemented throughout the country, transcending them in terms of type, quality, innovations, and importance, with the aim of demonstrating how each mill is actually a separate body, while participating in certain common aspects in particular groupings or types. The historical text that accompanies the valuable illustrations is divided into various moments of investigation that follow a chronological line. It is deliberately kept within the limits necessary to give space both to the explanatory captions of each subject and to a necessary glossary that specifies and defines the milling terminology: an essential bibliography was necessary in the intention of highlighting the most important studies on the topic. ​Cereals: A Gift from Demeter-Ceres to Humanity The introduction of cereals into the human diet led to an epochal transformation of civil life and living, because from a subsistence previously based primarily on hunting, fishing, and livestock farming, marked by constant migration, we moved with it to a sedentary and sedentary life linked to agriculture, with the consequent creation of urban settlements, thus forever revolutionizing the ways in which man placed himself on earth. However, over the millennia the process of handling individual cereals was long, in a continuous refinement of crushing techniques, which first led to a crude flour rich in impurities up to the current product now reduced almost to an impalpable dust, passing from the rudimentary prehistoric mortar operated by the hand of man up to the complex mills powered by hydraulic or wind energy of the last centuries, to end with modern milling industries regulated by sophisticated electronic devices. There are numerous fruits in grains of the "cereal plant", that is, of any herbaceous Graminaceae plant with fruits destined to become flour. The name "cereal" descends from Ceres, an ancient Roman goddess of vegetation, assimilated since the 5th century BC. C. to the Greek Demeter, both linked to the cult of the earth and therefore of its products capable of nourishing humanity: one of their most significant symbols was precisely a bunch of ears of wheat, thus immediately declaring their agrarian nature. ​Without a doubt, "cereals" in the Western and Middle Eastern world have had an essential importance in nutrition, even if quality choices and methods of use have sometimes been very differentiated in time and space. Among the "major" cereals, for example, wheat in its varieties had absolute preeminence until the arrival in Europe of corn or corn that arrived from America after its discovery, ending up over time and in certain regions of Italy, especially northern Italy, almost halving wheat production. However, the success of the so-called "minor" cereals was different, some of which (such as barley, spelt, rye, spelt and millet) had a certain success as a food especially in arid or poor areas, or in historical situations of famine or destruction of crops due to natural or war causes (in this case also oats, intended mainly for horses, it could also become nourishment for men). Other foods also gradually entered the human diet over time. Among these, in addition to phagopyrus or buckwheat, cultivated in Europe since the 15th century, we remember above all rice, a primary food in south-eastern Asia, which arrived in Italy in the 15th century, later finding diffusion especially in northern Italy and Tuscany. But the mill was interested in grinding not only the grains just considered, but, appropriately modified, intervened to grind oily products, such as olives, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, and also chestnuts, flax, sunflower and more. If we then add sesame, lentils, peas, chickpeas, beans, turnips, broad beans, lupins and copanatico, we see that much of human nutrition has played an important role in the mill. Not only that, but its "crushing" possibilities have also had uses in the crushing and pulverization of numerous materials and inerts, used in various human activities. From the prehistoric mortar to the Roman donkey wheel Archaeological research has demonstrated how grain crushing and grinding techniques date back at least to the Neolithic Age (if not earlier) and how the historic two-round-palment millstone powered by human or animal power, the Roman donkey wheel, should be considered the culmination of a long process of research and evidence spanning millennia. The mortar Rudimentary methods of pounding and crushing cereals or grains generally show that they are still present in the Neolithic age (but recent finds also date back to earlier periods). Grinding took place through a wooden tool (but later also metal), that is, a hardened stake in the lower tip (the pestle) which it pounded in a cylindrical or truncated cone-shaped container made of wood or stone (the mortar), dug "in a bowl" inside it and with raised walls to prevent the seeds from splashing away during pounding. With the operation of crushing in a mortar, the cereals broke, also losing the casing or pericarp that surrounded them and their kernels thus broken, if moistened, could already enter the daily diet. In archaic Lazio, for example, before the introduction of bread, the so-called puls was eaten, a farinata or polenta made from spelt or millet processed with milk or water, unknown to the Greeks (Plin. nat. hist. 18, 83-84). The sanding room To achieve a fairly refined flour and at the same time to prevent too many grains from splashing away during the "piling" in the mortar, we soon reached the "smoothing room". It was essentially nothing more than an archaic grinding tool made up of a stone slab with a flat lower surface and a concave, saddle-shaped upper surface, or with raised margins, which served as a fixed "base": on this then, with a rounded stone in the shape of a round stone or loaf, or roller, called a "grinder", the grain kernels were crushed, moved and pulped, turning the partially broken grains into flour. This operation took place using one or two hands, usually on one knee, and was a difficult task, especially for women: it was carried out not only by going back and forth, but above all by rotating the grinder, applying pressure with the weight of the body. The use of the sander, to avoid excessive effort, was usually preceded by the "piling" of the grains, an operation previously described, which was generally entrusted to men, as we have previously said. In reality, the "smoothing room" now appears as the antecedent of the two-palment millstone. This grinding tool is widely attested in ancient Egypt; the operation was daily and was normally entrusted to slaves, as confirmed by written and figurative sources. The hopper sander A notable technological innovation, which occurred in the 5th century BC first in Greece and then in the Mediterranean area (but which is destined to last until the present day), is also the "hopper" applied to the sanding machine, ensuring that the grinding surfaces have a more or less regular continuity of grain feeding. In reality, it is a particular type of "sander", in which the "grinder" (or upper grinding stone) first came to have a central hole (rather irregular and wide) capable of accommodating the grain, then ended up taking on a regularized shape in which the molar stone had a "hopper" cavity that opened towards a median longitudinal slot located at the bottom: this created a grain reservoir with a rectangular upper "mouth" ("grinder-hopper"). Subsequently, some refinements were made: first, median recesses were made on the smaller faces of the "hopper grinder" for the application of a handlebar to be operated by two hands, then we moved on to a "hopper grinder" operated by a lever. This had one end provided with a posable pin fixed to the plane of the sander, while the other end was at a suitable distance from the sander, allowing a person to operate the "grinder-hopper" which thus went back and forth along a sector of the circumference. Of great interest, however, is the presence of geometric grooves or grooves on the contact faces of porphyry or trachyte hopper sanders (but not lava rock) found as early as classical Greece and then gradually becoming more and more frequent in the following centuries: these grooves subsequently passed over the contact faces of the round millstones of almost all the mills, where they took mostly regularized forms. The mills with rotary millstones The driving energy that rotates the upper or current millstone can be given by: either a man (hand mill), or an animal (mostly a donkey or a horse) moving in a circle (animal or riding mill or donkey wheel), or by water (water mill) or wind (wind mill).  Hand-operated rotary grinders, also called "spelt grinders" It seems probable (Sebesta 1997) that it was precisely from the last variant of the "hopper sander" just considered that the idea arose to gradually expand the circumference sector covered by the "hopper grinder", up to complete rotation, thus giving rise to the hand-pushed cylindrical "rotary grinders". This would have occurred as late as the 4th century BC in the Greek or Hellenized world, although attempts have been identified elsewhere. As regards the introduction of the "round mills" in central-southern Italy in the Roman era, Pliny (nat. hist. 36,135-136) states that Varro indicated such molae versatiles as the invention of the city of Bolsena (in a period before 265 BC), indeed some of them would have prodigiously moved even on their own: in any case, Pliny continues, the best molar stones (and not rocks) would be found in Italy (especially in central-southern Etruria). Animal-powered mill or donkey wheel of the "Pompeian" or "Roman" type with an hourglass millstone Pliny (nat. hist. 18,107) states that in Rome there had been no bakers (pistores) until the war against Perseus, king of Macedonia (won by the Romans in 168 BC) and that before that the Romans made bread at home, making use above all of the work of women, as was also the custom among many peoples in his time. In essence, the flour sufficient for a family of modest size had until then been supplied by human-driven "round mills", that is, by molae trusatiles. But with the rise of bakeries and the spread of large estates, the need for flour multiplied greatly, so it was necessary to enlarge the millstones and make them move steadily with an energy more robust and powerful than that of humans. Thus, animal energy was soon used, particularly that of donkeys (although there was no shortage of use of horses): therefore, in the first half of the 2nd century BC, a new large millstone was used (already tested in Greece and the Hellenistic world, especially during the 3rd century BC) in which a donkey (asinus molarius) or more frequently a"donkey turned the millstone (donkey millstone, also called "a maneggio" by some) by means of a yoke arm, even if this operation could be replaced by the force of one or two slaves, often as punishment. This new "animal-force mill" was of the "hourglass mill" type (also called the "Pompeian" type due to its great frequency in Pompeii or the "Roman" type). It featured a fixed lower millstone or "bottom", formed by a cylinder ending in a high cone, and a running upper millstone or "lid" with a double truncated cone joined by the smaller face as is done with an hourglass, thus ensuring that the lower truncated cone had an effective function as a running millstone, while the opposing (and overlapping) truncated cone, facing with the "mouth" upwards, it took on the function of a large hopper. At the meeting point of the two truncated cones were simple or double (and then opposite) protrusions or recesses of various shapes, in which the arms used (straight or "yoke") by humans or animals to rotate the running millstone were locked by various means. To prevent the grinding faces of the bottom and lid from touching, special devices were also put in place to act as spacers or "temperatures". A hemmed wall or other expedients appropriately arranged all around the lower millstone had the task of collecting the ground flour while avoiding dispersion: usually in an hour you could have about 7 kg of flour. Cato the Censor (234-149 BC) clearly refers to the use of the donkey wheel and the previous trusatilis wheel in his famous work De agri cultura (10,4) from the first half of the 2nd century BC in a passage in which, among other things, he immediately afterwards recalls numerous mortars and pestles of various uses. However, little is known about some variants such as the "Hispanic millstone" (mola hispaniensis) still mentioned by Cato (agr. 10,4) or the "suspended millstone" (mola suspensa) which Columella (II 10.35) cites in his treatise on Roman agriculture as being used in Baetic Spain to crush forage grass pea. The water mill The historical events of the mill operated by hydraulic energy in the first centuries of its history are fragmentary and this has given rise to misunderstandings and clichés of all kinds. A partial rereading of historical sources and archaeological evidence is therefore necessary, despite its problematic nature. First of all, the term "water mill" is ambiguous: it refers only to the fact that the mill is powered by hydraulic energy, or rather, that water generates the thrust that turns the millstones; however, no reference is made to the type of mechanisms that transmit kinetic energy from the wheel powered by the water to the running upper millstone. In fact, although the systems for generating the rotation of the millstone with water are very varied and complex, conditioned by place and time, the transmission mechanisms that led to ancient grinding can essentially be reduced to two different main modes: the mill can be driven by a horizontally arranged water wheel, giving rise to the "ritrecine"; or the mill can be moved by a vertically arranged water wheel, giving rise to the commonly imagined "water mill", also called "Vitruvian". Now it is difficult for ancient or medieval historical sources to indicate the typology of the "mills" they indicate. Another problem is to identify where and when the first "Vitruvian" watermill was built. In our opinion, it could not have arisen in a cultural environment lacking in mechanical cognition, but in an area where applied sciences, abundant water, the flourishing of agriculture, and efficient power "forced" minds to find an adequate technical response: this site could be nothing other than Alexandria in Egypt, the cultural capital of the Hellenistic kingdom of the Ptolemies. ​Here various scientists specializing in mechanisms and automatisms, such as the "mechanic" Ctesibius, Philo of Byzantium and others, had already created a real school of engineering in the city during the 3rd century BC (the first known to us ever), in which "direct" or "indirect" transmission systems were now widely tested. The Greek name hydralétes of the watermill itself (although it is not clearly self-declaring) indirectly informs that the milling machine in question comes from a Greek-speaking area, as Hellenistic Egypt was at that time. Also of a poetic nature and with a moralistic-social tone is the inevitable mention of the watermill (considered as an instrument of servile liberation) in the famous epigram of the Palatine Anthology (IX, 418), attributed to Antipater of Thessalonica and perhaps datable to 5 BC (in any case in the full Augustan age). In it, the goddess Ceres, who until then had used the hands of women to grind grain, would now order the Naiads (nymphs of springs, rivers and, in general, waters) to replace the poor slaves in their work, hurling themselves to the top of a wheel: this will end up turning around its own axis, which, equipped with "rays", will forcefully operate the millstone. From a historical perspective, it is interesting to note how the Naiads (i.e. water) reach the water wheel, "upstairs", almost as if the poet was referring to a mill moved by a vertical wheel and not by a horizontal wheel. That the new water milling machine had not eliminated, but only coexisted with the donkey or hand mill, is also proven by the frequent presence of the latter in Pompeii. However, this pre-eminence of the old grinding systems as early as the second half of the 1st century AD would seem to have been cracked. Pliny the Elder (nat. hist. 18,97), writing between 50 and 70 AD, states in fact that in his time most of Italy used either the bare pestle, or water-powered wheels (quas aqua verset) for grinding grain, and only occasionally traditional millstones. It now seems certainly proven, even by archaeological excavations, that Rome, already in the imperial age and probably during the 2nd century AD, began to equip itself with watermills, choosing the Janiculum Hill on the right bank of the Tiber as one of the favourite locations of the millers who put most of their watermills into action here. Procopius of Caesarea in his famous work, known as the Gothic War (a conflict between the Byzantines and the Goths that lasted between 535 and 553 AD and in which he participated as an attaché to the person of the great Byzantine general Belisarius), speaking precisely of this hill (Bell. Goth. 1,19), states that "in ancient times" "all the mills of the city" had been built on it, since Trajan's Aqueduct (109 AD) had been brought here to the top of the Janiculum, then sending a large quantity of water down the slope of the hill and into a mighty waterfall. He then goes on to state that, precisely for this reason, the ancient Romans wanted to surround the hill and the river bank with walls, so that no enemy could ever destroy the mills or cross the Tiber River. For this purpose they would have built a bridge (i.e. the Ponte Aurelio, dating back to the 2nd or 3rd century, today on the site of the Ponte Sisto). Recently, during archaeological excavations inside Porta San Pancrazio (formerly Aurelia or the Janiculum), remains of the mills just considered have been found at the highest point of the hill (82 m) (van Buren, Stevens 1915-1916; Bell 1993). A situation similar to that of the city of Rome would also seem to have occurred in southern Gaul, near Arles. Here, probably still in the 2nd century AD, about 10 km east of the city, on the site of the present-day centre of Barbegal, taking advantage of the slope of about 30° of a hill, eight pairs of mills were put into operation, along a difference in height of 18.60 m, for a total of 16 wheels (with a diameter of 2.20 m and a thickness of 0.70 m): they were powered "above" from water coming from two adjacent aqueducts. According to rough calculations, it seems that this system of mills, probably the work of Candidio Benigno, a local engineer, produced approximately 2800 kg of flour in 10 hours a day, an amount at an "industrial" level not only for those times (Sagui 1948; Amouretti 1992). However, some of the earliest archaeological evidence of a Roman watermill (perhaps "ritrecine"), almost certainly the work of legionaries, has been found along the Vallum Hadriani in England. We know in fact that under the tower built over the left abutment of the Second Bridge over the River North Tyne at Chesters (rebuilt perhaps in the years 207-208 AD at the time of the emperor Septimius Severus) there was a covered artificial shower or canal that fed a mill; as well as the pile east of the Second Bridge at Willowford in the county of Cumbria (dating perhaps to the Antoninian period, that is, around the middle of the 2nd century AD) it created a strait on the River Irthing, in order to form a current of water used to power a mill intended for grinding grain; a third mill (but not on the Vallum) finally appears to have been in action in front of the ancient city gate of Cirencester (Gloucestershire) at the site of the Bridge over the River Churn (Galliazzo 1995). In the 3rd century AD, the strong revival of watermills on the Janiculum Hill in Rome soon generated a rebellion by the owners of the old mills with animal or servile power. But the problem had now become so general that in the Digest of Ulpian (XXXIV 2.24), datable to 211 AD, precise rules appear on the use of water (and therefore also on connected hydraulic systems). As the 4th century AD passed, archaeological and monumental evidence of the watermill became increasingly intense: during this period, the use of water for milling plants began to be expressly regulated by legislative interventions. The emperor Diocletian in his Edictum de pretiis (15,54) of 301 AD establishes the cost of the water mill (mylos hydraletikós) in 2000 denarii (but if the mill was operated by a horse 1500 denarii, if by a donkey 1250, the "hand" one only 250 denarii), while at the end of the century in 395 AD the emperors Honorius and Arcadius dictate precise rules for the waters of the mills to be diverted without committing abuses (Codex Theod. XIV, XV 4). But meanwhile, during the 4th century, the use and diffusion of the watermill became increasingly widespread: in the time of Constantine, the Historiarum Compendium recalls the journey of the Persian Metrodoros to India, where he later built some mills, structures still ignored by the Brahmins; in 325 AD, an inscription from the city of Orcistus in Phrygia refers to a copious number of aquimolae, that is, watermills, along one of their rivers (Chastagnol 1981); in the Opus agriculturae (1,41) by Palladius Rutilius Taurus Namazionus, a writer from Gaul who lived in the last sixty years of the century, mills are mentioned that exploited the water from the baths of a rural villa; finally around 370-371 AD the Roman poet Ausonius of Bordeaux in his idyll Moselle (see. 362-364) recalls on the river Ruwer (Erubris), a tributary of the Moselle, the grain wheels moved quickly by the current, as well as a hydraulic saw for cutting marble. The Venafro sul Tuliverno mill also appears to belong to the same century, with a water wheel approximately 1.85 m in diameter, equipped with 18 blades fed by an aqueduct: the wheel made 46 revolutions per minute, producing approximately 150 kg of flour per hour (Jacono 1939). In the 5th century the presence of the watermill continued to expand: in 448 AD, among other things, one of the first testimonies of a guild of millers is recorded, while in 450 we have in the Vie des péres du Juras evidence of the presence of a mill among religious people (Panduri 2001). In Athens, in the Agora, in the year 470 AD, a mill was built which was later destroyed in 582 following a Slavic invasion (Parsons 1936). The growth of mills is also frequently witnessed in the 6th century in Cassiodorus (var. 3,31; 11,39,2), in Gregory of Tours (Bloch 1935) and in the Lex Salica (XXII, 2). Also interesting is the fact that in the Rule of Saint Benedict (chap. XVI) of 540 a watermill is planned inside the monastery. Even in this century we encounter the oldest news of a "swimming mill" connected to a bridge. He is indeed an eyewitness, cultured and expert, that is, Procopius of Caesarea (Bell. Goth. 1,19), who stops to describe the circumstances of this "invention" due to necessity. In fact, in the year 537, during the Byzantine war against the Goths, the Gothic king Vitiges laid siege to Rome and among the first offensive operations had all fourteen aqueducts then in operation cut, including Trajan's Aqueduct which powered the watermills located on the slope of the Janiculum, interrupting the supply of flour for the entire city of Rome. The commander of the Byzantine armies Belisarius, seeing that it was impossible to run the mills even with animals, now without food, devised a new milling mechanism never seen before: he had ropes stretched to their maximum from one bank of the Tiber to the other right upstream of a "bridge connected to the city walls", that is, probably upstream of the Ponte Aurelio on the site of the current Ponte Sisto (Galliazzo 1995), then he had two small boats tied together at a distance of two feet, right at the point where the water current flowed most violently from an arch of the bridge; then in each small boat he placed two grinding wheels and between them he had the device installed that made them turn; after this he tied other small boats in series, connecting them with the others, but placed behind them, putting the usual devices inside them, so that the progressive force of the water made all the millstones turn one after the other: in this way it provided as much flour as was necessary for the entire city of Rome. And since then, Procopius always informs, the Romans continued to use those millstones. From all the testimonies reported so far (and they are only a small part of the approximately eighty known to us) it appears clearly that the hypothesis formulated by many (but not all) that the watermill in Roman times did not have the diffusion it deserved is inconsistent: in reality it was expensive and complex, it adapted in various ways to the times and had alternating developments, sometimes reaching almost industrial results, as in Rome and Barbegal. Water-powered milling machines exploited waterways and aqueducts, sometimes turning to uses other than that of grain mills (crushers, hydraulic saws or other): their coexistence with the hand mill or animal energy mill was not that different from that which existed until half a century ago in many isolated or poor regions of Italy and Europe. In practice this development of the watermill continued in the following centuries: it is present in the edict of the Lombard king Rotari of 643 (chapters 149-151) and in many sites of the 8th century and the 9th-10th century, finding a particular increase from the 11th to the 12th century onwards, especially because, starting again from the 10th century, Many lords used their rights of coercion to force their subjects to use only their mills (that is, they exercised their power of "banno"): to this end they also took care to have their subjects' bodies broken by hand, guaranteeing themselves safe income. This is a period in which there is no possession, castle, convent or abbey or inhabited center located near a river that did not often include a watermill. Monastic religious orders such as the Cluniacs (10th century) and the Cistercians (late 11th century) almost always contemplated the presence of at least one mill in their abbeys, creating specific charges for its operation and for its collateral activities. At the end of the 11th century in 1086 William the Conqueror surveyed 5,864 mills in England (Fink 1960; Madureri 1995) and the situation was not much different in other areas of Europe, especially in France. In Italy the diffusion of the mill was notable, especially in urban centres governed by free communities: the Statutes of numerous municipalities almost always include legislation regarding mills, millers and their relationships with the territory and society. On the other hand, no one could ignore the mill as an important and essential production machine not only for food, but also for industry. In the following centuries, the watermill (but from the 12th century also the windmill) continued its function as the primary machine for food, industry, and territorial modifications, influencing not only the landscape but also every aspect of civil and economic life with its frequent presence, attracting increasing attention from scholars especially, starting from the 16th century, when the so-called "Machine Theaters" were published, which described sometimes innovative machines, often accompanied by illustrations. Among these we remember Ramelli (1588) with 19 illustrations of mills (including one windmill): these, among other things, anticipating the times, show the first certain example of a hand-operated "rolling mill"; or, later (in 1607) Zonca which depicts mills of all types; not to mention the numerous writings on windmills, the work of mainly Flemish or Dutch writers or engineers. Such a fortune of the watermill (or windmill) came somewhat less, but was not immediately damaged, in the second half of the 18th century, when the Scotsman James Watt built the first rotary steam engine for a grain mill in 1782. Thus was born, after some uncertainties, the "steam mill" which during the 19th century and even more so in the 20th century gradually ended up supplanting (together with the use of the rolling mill) the water or wind mill, now increasingly relegated to being a singular historical testimony of the past, an astonishing monument of a time that no longer exists today. Types of watermills The main operating mechanisms that lead to grinding are essentially two: those of the horizontal wheel mill (or reed mill) and those of the vertical wheel mill (and with the latter type also go the mills with "hanging wheels" and those with "floating wheels"). On these types we can draw further examples and additions from the captions of the illustrations and, above all, from the entries in the attached glossary. Horizontal or "retrecine" waterwheel (also called "previtruvian" or Nordic or Norwegian or Scandinavian). In its conception, it is an elementary and simple mill: a small wheel equipped with perimetric vanes inserted or keyed towards the end of a regularized pile is placed horizontally within a current of water, while a running millstone is connected to the other end of the pile; the water rotates the wheel and with it the running millstone. This "direct motion transmission" milling machine is easy to understand and it is very likely that it preceded the vertical wheel mill for this very reason (it was in fact found in Jutland and other Nordic lands still in pre-Roman times, as well as in China). However, this "primitive" version had various defects. The wheel had to be relatively small and therefore had little hydraulic power, ending up being unable to rotate a large-scale millstone. It was then too slow because one revolution of the wheel corresponded to only one revolution of the millstone. The very arrangement of the blades (vertical or oblique) did not guarantee a happy and safe rotation of the wheel itself. Its verticality then forced grinding vertically and on water, creating several static and functional problems (grain and flour found themselves "above" the wheel). In practice, the only advantage consisted in the fact that it constituted the only mill possible in arid or mountainous areas, or in any case crossed by torrential or modest-volume watercourses, even if to put it into operation it was necessary to resort to appropriate channels or water reserves that guaranteed efficient rotation of the wheel. The definitive solution to all these problems apparently occurred during the Middle Ages, when the primitive water wheel was gradually replaced with the "ritrecine". ​Vertical waterwheel (also called historical or Vitruvian and called hydralétes in the Greco-Hellenistic world). It is a mill, very evolved and "indirectly transmitted", which Vitruvius calls hydraleta (but perhaps it is a modern textual restitution) and which he clearly describes in his famous treatise De architectura (10,5,2), giving for certain that it was widely known in the 1st century BC. In this case, the conditioning mechanism, which led to the rotation of the millstone, consisted of two different rotating elements: a large wheel with teeth near its circumference called the "lubecchio" and a small cylindrical wheel called the "rocchetto" or also the "lantern" with many equidistant perimetric dies in whose axis the shaft of the rotating millstone stood. Connected and rotated through an axial spindle with the water wheel (generally located "outside" the milling building), at each turn the lube had its teeth inserted the space between the spindles, significantly multiplying the rotations of the "spool" and with it those of the running millstone. The advantages of this milling machine were notable: a high hydraulic energy that allowed the use of millstones of significant proportions; the possibility of rotating the running millstone at will on the dormant millstone, thus reaching maximum efficiency; its willingness to solve any construction problems of the mill itself; and finally its multifunctionality capable of providing responses different from those of milling, so that, after some appropriate modifications, In place of the millstone, olive presses, fulling mills, "battiferri" or something else could be used (possibilities which also existed, but to a lesser extent, even with the introduction of the more advanced forms of "ritrecine"). ​ As for their location in the area, watermills can be: Earthen mills, if placed in masonry or wooden buildings along waterways or in sites supplied with water by means of appropriate diversion channels (gore, aqueducts or other). Earth mills are also those that are built across an entire watercourse or for a single stretch, or even those that are placed, even with projecting parts ("suspended") above a bridge using all or part of its load-bearing structures (in this case, transit is almost always guaranteed, but it is not always easy). Floating mills, if placed on both fixed and mobile floats in a river or on a body of water. Among these stand out those that exploit in various ways the hydraulic energy created by the damming of a bridge and the resulting "current" that forms between two piers (just as Belisarius had done in Rome in 537 AD). In fact, there was no medieval city that did not exploit the presence of urban bridges to anchor at least one floating mill usually downstream of one or more arches. Among the Roman bridges used in the medieval and modern ages for this purpose we can recall, for example, in Rome the Ponte Cestio, the Ponte Fabricio, the Ponte di Probo, or in Padua the Ponte Molino, or in Verona the Ponte della Pietra, but this also happened with numerous medieval or modern bridges, with a list that could continue for a long time (Galliazzo 1995). Floating mills could consist of a single boat with two side wheels (a "double-gear" swimming mill), a somewhat precarious solution, or, very often, they consisted of two boats placed side by side and kept at a suitable distance from each other by an appropriate beam, between which the water wheel was placed (a "single-gear" swimming mill). On this topic, see the entries in the Glossary: sandone, "mulinassa", "mulinella". Tidal mills, if they are driven by the movement of the tides, particularly impressive along the Atlantic coasts. In practice, they are built on a dam or "passway" that closes off even a modest inlet, forming a basin with bulkheads near the mill. The water brought in by the high tide is allowed in, taking care to immediately close the bulkheads. The low tide arrives, and once the bulkheads are opened, the water gap between the basin and the sea is exploited, thus operating the mill. They were proposed even before the year 1000 by an Arab geographer. One is remembered at Dover in England in the year 1086. Around a hundred were put into operation along the coasts of Brittany over the centuries (Madureri 1995). Some were also built in the Veneto along the Adriatic coast, taking the name of "aquimoli" (or aquaemolae): one is remembered in Forcona in 1014, while in 1044 a document from the monastery of San Giorgio della Pigneda recalls two others (Sebesta 1997). Water wheel positions Wheels were generally built almost always using wood, although this, especially in the last two centuries, has frequently been replaced by metal (especially iron), or the wheel has been given a mixed structure with wooden parts and metal parts (in particular the blades are often made of mostly curved iron sheets). The application of "poles" to the respective crown is most varied and often depends on local traditions. As for the positions of the wheels with respect to the water, keeping in mind the most common ones, we can usually have: • "vertical wheels", which are generally operated: "per di sotto" (in this case the water hits the blades at the bottom causing the wheel to rotate counterclockwise); "per di sopra" (in this case the wheel is almost always "cassette-shaped", or to use a sixteenth-century term "copedelli" or "copeélli" and the water, conveyed by a shower, hits the "cassette" blades at the top, causing the wheel to rotate clockwise: the rotating energy is due both to the thrust of the water and to its weight in the boxes and for this very reason it is also called the "loading" water wheel); "sideways" (in this case the water ends up against one side of the wheel with the help of a beating distributor equipped with guidelines, so that the wheel takes on a clockwise rotation while remaining a little submerged). ​• "horizontal" or "retractor" wheels: these are wheels of modest proportion equipped in their axis with a vertical frame strengthened along the perimeter by a hub, in which numerous blades are keyed, often externally shaped like a spoon or semi-spoon (even double). These braids (clear antecedents of today's turbine) must almost always receive the water falling from above, ensuring that it ends up obliquely "upstairs" on the blades (which for this very reason take on an oblique orientation). To accelerate their rotation as much as possible, the braces, used mainly in water-poor areas, often require a rather raised upstream collection "bowl" (sometimes more than 10 metres) from which the water is sent down (in the form of a "forced conduit") through a shower or closed masonry conduit, often shaped like a "trumpet" and arranged axially in a mostly tower-like building. In this way the falling force of the water is multiplied and the turbine effect ensures grinding (which is often "harvest"). • "pendant wheels" are radial paddle wheels, often used in floating mills, which, when set against a river current, exploit the different dynamic height between the upstream and downstream of the wheel. • "floating wheels", with an elongated cylindrical drum; they are a variant of the "pendant" wheels. The windmill The first windmills appear in Persia as late as the 7th century, but the record is too precarious to be credible. Another common misconception is that they were used in the Islamized East around the year 1000, but since the installation of one of them under the walls of Acre in Syria in 1189 led the locals to believe that it was an unusual monster, it is presumable that the new milling machine driven by wind energy was still unknown in those lands. In reality, the first reliable evidence of windmills could be dated to the penultimate twenty years of the 12th century, starting from the first certain examples known to us from 1180, located in Ste-Mère-Eglise and near Liesville in Normandy, or from the windmill near Bristol from 1181, and then in a few years it found a rapid diffusion in various locations in France, England, Flanders, of Holland and Germany, lands from which they would soon spread throughout much of Europe. Much luck would have been due both to the new possibilities of establishing the new wind-powered machine, and to the fact that the medieval laws that had formulated the "right of water" (and therefore also that of building mills), did not contemplate the "right of air" at all, even if the latter would soon be included among the "banal" rights, albeit among many difficulties (Rivals 1987). In Italy, windmills did not meet with great success. In the nineteenth century there were some projects in the Livorno area, in Venice and above all in Sardinia and Sicily (Madureri 1995): today they are very few and used almost entirely in the Sicilian salt pans. The milling mechanisms of the windmill are in practice completely the same as those of a watermill with vertical wheels but with an "overturned" arrangement, which gives rise to at least three variants that distinguish it from the water mill: the wind energy is located at the top and is collected by a "wind" wheel; this, with blades shaped like "wings" (see Glossary), rotates the "spindle", i.e. the rotating shaft carrying the sails, connected (inside the mill) with a slick and a spool that rotate the shaft of the mill located at the bottom; the cap or cap cover of the mill is rotatable to accommodate the direction of the wind with the wings. ​Typologically, windmills are relatively varied, but they can be traced back to two main types: • "the wooden pole mill" (also called "open-beaked" or "goat mill") in which the cabin, variously shaped and containing the machines, rotates around a solid, adequately reinforced pole or column which acts as a support (there is also a variant of this with "empty column and closed beak"); • and the perhaps later "tower mill" (late 13th century), in which the cylindrical or truncated cone-shaped or polygonal tower (of masonry or wood) contains most of the machines and appears surmounted by a rotating cap (or hat or hood) that supports the wing group. There is an abundant literature on the impact that the windmill had on the landscape, art and collective imagination: it is so evident that it does not deserve further words. The rolling mill and the mill-factory A decisive revolution in the history of the grain mill began when the thousand-year-old two-palment millstones were replaced by rolling mills, powered by steam engines or electric motors: it was the end of the ancient mill and its highly tested mechanisms. An embryonic iron rolling mill with a small hopper and working by hand (the first ever) had been described by Agostino Ramelli as late as 1588 (Ramelli 1588), but it was not followed up. Some attempts in eighteenth-century England and France had little development. It was not until the year 1821 that this brilliant intuition took shape in Switzerland (but it was in the year 1832 that a certain grinding began here). However, it was only after an incredible series of transformations and almost always "patented" improvements, which took place especially between the years 1870-1880 (particularly important were those of Friedrich Wegmann in 1873 and 1874), that the real "cylinder grinding" was achieved. This one, among other things, immediately showed that it had numerous advantages over the "millstone" one: speed, large production, poor wear, inexpensive maintenance, ease of operation, limited space for the machine, finer flours, and slight overheating. The rolling mill essentially consisted of two rolls (first porcelain and then almost always cast iron) with smooth or ruled surfaces, which, when placed side by side and turned in the opposite direction, reduced the grains to the required granulation, after they had reached the desired space between the two rotating bodies. As can be clearly seen, the age-old horizontal rotation of the ancient millstones, which offered "low," "rapid," and "deep" grinding, had disappeared from this machine: the slow rotation of the millstones shattered everything, giving a mixture of flour, bran, and bran that not even a perfected tumbler could divide, so the flour always contained impurities. All the more so since this operation was relatively easy for soft grains, but it was difficult for hard grains, so these were previously subjected to wetting, with serious risks for the subsequent preservation of the flours. With the rolling mill, however, the rotation of the rollers was vertical and the crushing and relative crushing of the grains occurred gradually (i.e. passing several times between two rollers), so the grinding was "high", "round", "gradual or progressive", allowing, in the various steps, to gradually remove the bran and bran without overheating, to then produce a pure and considerably more preservable flour. The extraordinary quantity of flour that the new grinding system prepared in a short time then led to a revolution in the possibilities of peeling off the tumbler, so after several attempts, we arrived at the "Plansichter" (invented in 1887 by a Hungarian miller), a sophisticated industrial tumbler that through a double rotation and oscillation movement (together with an efficient system of veli-sieves) managed to "classify the flours", dividing them according to the size of the grains. The multiplication of rolling mills and Plansichters in the same mill, the large quantity of grain consumed, the speed of processing, the presence of transmission belts both to transport the grain and to make it rise and fall from above (by means of bucket elevators) in the various rolling mills and Plansichters (allowing to alternate regrinding with tumbling), the steam or electric machines useful for their operation were all contributing factors that forced us to abandon the typical mill of the past, generally placed on two or three levels and of rather modest proportions, to give life to much more imposing and multi-storey constructions, with deposits and silos of various kinds, true factory mills at an industrial level, as the Certosa Mills of Pavia (fig. 13) and the famous Stuckj Mill of Venice, which overlooks the Giudecca Canal, soon proved to be, built, starting in 1895, by the architect Ernest Wullekopf with a typically Northern imprint of neo-Gothic style and considered at the end of the nineteenth century as "the most beautiful mill" in all of Italy (today in the process of being restored, but with another purpose). The history of the evolution of the industrial mill is not over, however: continuous innovations in machines and operating and control systems using increasingly sophisticated electronic means are now employed by the largest industrial mills in every part of the earth. ​ Source: "Mills in Italy" by Vittorio Galliazzo