The Po river, which passes through the whole width of northern Italy, has long been one of the country’s most vital waterways. For centuries, ship mills, a kind of floating water mills used for grinding grains, were once a common sight along its banks.

In 1902, the first (and last) official Italian census about ship mills in the Po river found that there were 266. Less than half a century later, in 1945, Allied bombings at the end of World War II destroyed the last surviving ship mill on the river.

In Revere the ship mill was rebuilt as part of the Museo del Po di Revere hosted in Palazzo Ducale. Nowadays, it is the only working ship mill in Italy and one of the few in Europe.