The Mills road on the Balenaia stream

Along the path that goes into the Balenaia gorge there are several mills that are still quite clearly recognizable in their general layout, even if some parts have deteriorated or have definitively collapsed, and sometimes covered by vegetation. In general, the structures of the basement room are very well preserved, where the mechanism for transforming the force of water into mechanical energy was located. The water, harnessed upstream of the mill, arrived with force in the lower room through a conduit called the 'shower' where it operated the blades of the ritecine, the vertical shaft hinged on the ceiling. The rotary motion of the retrecine was thus transferred to the stone mill on the upper floor. This was the space for grinding (cereals or chestnuts) for the production of flour. The water that operated the retrecine then used to come out of the structure of the mill through large arched openings that are very often seen on the facades of the mills drawn in historical maps. The number of water outlets corresponds to the ones of the motion transmission mechanisms and therefore to the number of milling machines which are inside the factory. In some cases the archive research and the analysis of the historical cartography allowed the identification of the name of the mill (the toponym or the name of the property) and a rough dating of the structure.