The village of Lozzo di Cadore once boasted a wealth of craft activities that used the water from the Rin brook, a right-hand affluent of the Piave, mostly channelled through a derivation canal that started out from the areas known as “Crepe Ros”. The “roggia dei mulini” (irrigation channel of the mills” was the object of careful restoration work within the framework of the EU project Raffaello 1997-2000, and is one of the most interesting, complex examples of industrial archaeology in the Cadore. These industrial facilities, most of which closed in the second half of the 20th century, were used for milling (the Del Favero mill – the oldest -, the Da Pra e Calligaro mill, the “dei Pinza”, mill, used for both milling and fulling, and the two Baldovin mills), spinning wool (Fratelli Zanella), forging metals (Baldovin Marin Lorenzo), and there were also sawmills (both municipal and private) and carpentry workshops (Baldovin Carulli, etc.). Still in operation, with the original early twentieth-century machinery, is the Baldovin Carulli electrical power plant, which uses the water captured by a dam just a little further upstream at “Le Spesse”. Other mills and workshops must have been destroyed by the fire in 1867, because we know from the 1766 Veneto Records that in Lozzo at that time there were “ten corn mills, a sawmill for timber, a facility for fulling wool, sixteen frames for spinning fabric and five grindstones”. In the western area of the village, near the Rin brook, there are numerous fountains (150 HAA), octagonal, rectangular or semi-circular in shape, most of which date back to the mid-19th century, the period during which the first municipal aqueduct was built and when Osvaldo Palatini, in 1842, designed a wooden channel that was to start out from the Rin brook.

From Domegge, take the SS51 bis road towards Auronzo, then the municipal road that leads into the centre of the village of Lozzo. Here in the village the various mills are well signposted.

ACCESSIBLE: along an equipped path that starts out from the western neighbourhoods of Lozzo, at the foot of Monte Revis
MUNICIPALITY: Lozzo di Cadore
PLACE: along the flow of the Rin brook
GEOGRAPHICAL COORDINATES: X 1764016 – Y 5153804
PROVINCE: Belluno

FILE COMPILED BY: Antoniol/Vallerani

On the banks of the numerous torrents in the Cadore, many hydraulic machines were built between the 18th and 20th century. In Oltre Piave - in Vigo, Laggio and Lorenzago – along the flow of the Piova torrent and its affluents, there were once two sawmills and five mills; on the Cridola there was one sawmill; on the Rin Montanel opposite Domegge there was a mill and a barley crusher, and on the Anfela torrent at Rauza di Sottocastello there was a mill, a barley crusher and a sawmill. Most of these mills and workshops in the Cadore were located on the right bank of the Piave, such as the mill-sawmill in Nebbiù, the forge on Ru Seco at Valle, a more recent sawmill-mill in Pozzale and numerous establishments on the Molinà torrent at Calalzo.

Tabacchi, D. De Martin, Uomini e macchine idrauliche nel Cadore d’inizio Novecento, Cortina d’Ampezzo, 2010
C. De Mas, La roggia dei mulini lungo il Rio Rin a Lozzo di Cadore, EU Project “Raffaello” – Comunità Montana Centro Cadore, Pieve di Cadore, 2000