Easy to spot on a rise on the edge of the village of Longarone, the former brewery was built in brick and limestone, in several phases from 1895 onwards. Under the ownership of the entrepreneurs Bonato and Pra Baldi, the brewery flourished in the years leading up to WWI, and even took part in the expositions in Rome, Turin and Paris between 1909 and 1912. In 1927 the brewery entered into a period of crisis, and the premises were used only sporadically for other purposes, until an attempt to restore it to its former glory on the part of a German industrial group, during the reconstruction of Longarone following the Vajont dam disaster. The building, after lying in a state of abandon for fifty years, has recently been the object of restoration work that has conserved only the elegant external view. The brewery was formed of three buildings arranged in an orthogonal shape, and a fourth building spread out towards the road, in which the most important beer-making processes took place. The water supply came from the intake system on the Coppedello brook above, which also supplied the penstock of the hydraulic motor, and was used, from 1896 onwards, by the Cappellari e De Bona public lighting system. The water, after supplying the public washtub in Roggia and the factory, was used by the turbine of the hydroelectric plant in Malcom.

From the A27 motorway exit in the direction of Cadore-Cortina, after the village of Longarone, at km 51 on the left of the SS51 trunk road, surrounded by a stone wall, the former brewery can be seen.

ACCESSIBLE: can be seen from the outside only; the building has been turned into a housing complex
MUNICIPALITY: Longarone
PLACE: Longarone – Brewery
GEOGRAPHICAL COORDINATES: X 1754357 – Y 5130130
PROVINCE: Belluno

FILE COMPILED BY: Antoniol

In Longarone, just after the mouth of the Maè torrent and the Vajont dam, a barrier known as “Villanova” was built diagonally across the Piave to sort the last of the timber, after which only rafts could pass through.

A. Sacchet, Centrale elettrica Cappellari-De Bona di Roggia, in E. Deon Cardin, Il Lavoro nelle Valli del Piave e del Vajont prima del 9 Ottobre 1963, 2008
D. Ricci Sernagiotto, La Fabbrica di Birra di Longarone, in S. De Vecchi, Opere nel Tempo-le tradizioni dell’industria e dell’artigianato tra i monti della Provincia di Belluno, S. Giovanni in Lupatoto, Verona, 1991
D. Ricci Sernagiotto, La Fabbrica di Birra di Longarone, in Archeologia Industriale nel Veneto, Veneto Regional Council, Venice, 1990