BATTIFERRO BERTOLI [IT]
Exploration #86. Battiferro Bertoli is an ancient industrial site dating back to 1500, when the Counts Florio arrived from Dalmatia and established themselves in these territories. The farmhouse with annexed agricultural property and grain mill was built near a jump in the Udine canal a few hundred years earlier.
At the end of the 18th century, the property was given to the descendants of the counts in usufruct to a farm labourer named Bertoli. He knows how to make the most of the opportunity given to him: he becomes the owner of the land, of the mill, which in the meantime has become an iron-beater. The Bertolis started their iron-beater business by installing several water wheels, two pairs of double donkey-head hammers, leaf spring hammers and built a real production centre of shovels, rakes, hoes and everything else that was made (in those days) from iron and that the market required.
In the years that followed, the Bertoli ironworks were established and, until the 1980s, the large Bertoli Safau foundries.