Molino Stucky, Venice
Giovanni Stucky raised a neo-Gothic flour mill on the Giudecca that still startles — a slab of Hanoverian brick towering over the lagoon, finished in 1895 to grind 2,500 quintals of flour a day.
At a glance
The Molino Stucky is one of the largest industrial buildings in historic Venice, a brick neo-Gothic mill that dominates the western Giudecca. The Swiss financier Giovanni Stucky commissioned it from the German architect Ernst Wullekopf, who built it between 1884 and 1895 in the Hanoverian industrial Gothic of his homeland. It milled flour and made pasta until 1954, and since 2007 has been a Hilton hotel.
Key facts
- Built: 1884–1895
- Commissioner: Giovanni Stucky
- Architect: Ernst Wullekopf
- Style: neo-Gothic industrial (Hanoverian)
- Function: flour mill and pasta factory (up to 1,500 workers); closed 1955
- Today: the Hilton Molino Stucky Venice (since 2007)
History
Venice was never an industrial city, which is what makes the Molino Stucky so startling. Giovanni Stucky, heir to a milling fortune, wanted a mill to match the new industrial age and turned to a German architect, Ernst Wullekopf, who built between 1884 and 1895 in the brick Gothic of Hanover — alien to Venice, and all the more imposing for it.
At its height the mill employed some 1,500 workers and ground 2,500 quintals of flour a day. Its fortunes turned with the twentieth century — Stucky was killed by a former worker in 1910, and trade and currency policy under Fascism undercut the business — and the mill closed for good in 1955.
After decades standing empty, a fire in April 2003 gutted the central block. The complex was restored and reopened in 2007 as a Hilton hotel, its silhouette unchanged on the lagoon.
What you see
A vast block of red brick, gabled and crenellated, the name STUCKY and a great clock set into the façade, a tower rising at one end. From across the Giudecca canal it reads as a piece of northern Europe moored in the lagoon.
The building is now a hotel; the exterior is best seen from the water or from the Zattere opposite.
Practical information
- Now the Hilton Molino Stucky; the exterior is the architecture
- Best seen from a vaporetto or from the Zattere across the canal
- At the western tip of the Giudecca
- Allow 15 minutes
Getting there
The Molino Stucky is on the western Giudecca, reached by vaporetto; the Hilton runs its own shuttle from Piazzale Roma and San Marco, and lines 2 and 4.1/4.2 stop nearby.
Nearby
- The Giudecca and the Redentore church
- The Zattere and Dorsoduro
- The Fondazione Vedova (Magazzini del Sale)
Sources
- Comune di Venezia
- Treccani — industrial Venice
- IUAV — Venetian industrial heritage studies
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