OlonaGreenWay

Rancilio Furnace

The last of the furnaces  built along the valley of the river

The clayey soils of the Olona valley, a gift of nature, were used for centuries to make objects useful to man (bricks and tiles).
This twentieth-century industrial architecture, the last of the furnaces to be built along the valley of the Olona River, stood near a vein of clay deposited in ancient times. The owner, Giuseppe Rancilio, took it until the sixties of the twentieth century.

Today, walking along the Olona Green Way, it is possible to admire in the distance the chimney of the Rancilio Furnace, from which the combustion fumes used to escape for the cooking of the hollow bricks and tiles. These artifacts were produced with clays taken from neighbouring fields that were excavated and transported on wagons towed by tractors. Around 1000 bricks were produced manually from the material quarried in the furnace, thanks to the hard work of the master furnace workers from all over Milan.