Il Mulinone

In the years that followed, in response to market demand, the site was converted into a mill for producing paper cord and hemp fabric, as well as a factory for wax matches. From 1920, the complex – which still retains its perimeter wall and several red-brick buildings, bearing witness to this industrial heritage – returned to use as a mill for the production of flour and, in the 1970s, animal feed. The enormous and imposing scale of the Mulinone led to the decision to commission Gino Pellegrini to decorate the vast wall facing the town centre and make it more pleasing to the eye. In 1984, a number of decorators, craftspeople and students worked on the project, coordinated by the set designer, who had chosen a motif inspired by agricultural traditions and local history: ears of wheat and grapes. Recently, on one of the walls bordering the track used for the mill’s operations, the artist Alice Pasquini created a mural entitled *Mille papaveri rossi* (*A Thousand Red Poppies*), dedicated to the women of the Resistance and the birth of the Italian Constitution.