Ancient Oil Mill

Ancient Oil Mill The eighteenth-nineteenth-century oil mill provides a valid historical testimony of a peasant civilization that no longer exists today, allowing the visitor a real visual reconstruction of a typical environment of everyday life in the Maremma city. The factor that makes the mill so interesting is the completeness of the whole apparatus, a relevant example of the processing of olives both with animal and human energy. The large toothed pegwheel, whose prototype was first designed by Leonardo da Vinci, is still perfectly preserved. It is connected to the granite millstone by means of a lever to which the mule and the bottleneck were hooked, a manually operated oak wood press that was used to crush the olive paste produced by the millstone. There also remain objects useful for carrying out the work, such as the bruscole, circular bags made of woven straw where the olive paste was placed during the pressing, the measuring cups for the retail sale of oil and the tool for toasting barley. At the entrance of the mill you can see the equipment for the sale of virgin olive oil, olive pomace oil and the foundation, which was used for oil lamps. The bottom of the room was instead used as a stable for the mule.