Discover what to do in Nove (VI): The Pestasassi Mill, the Ceramics Festival, the Church of Saints Peter and Paul. Want to know more? First of all…
Where is Nove located?
The municipality of Nove borders to the northeast with Bassano del Grappa, to the northwest with Marostica, to the southeast with Pozzoleone, to the southwest with Schiavon, to the east with Bassano del Grappa, Cartigliano and Pozzoleone, to the west with Marostica and Schiavon.
Pestasassi Mill
One of the most significant cultural landmarks of the town of Nove, the milling complex was set up in a 17th-century building harmoniously inserted along the clear and gushing Brenta canal that crosses the urban heart of the town.
Externally, the walls of the building are covered by a dense mantle of ivy and thin climbing roots, through which red bricks exposed to the sun can be glimpsed where the light plaster surface has crumbled near the water’s edge. The most distinctive and fascinating element is the large mill wheel, veiled in moss, slowly pushed by the mill race delimited by stone walls.
The mill was used to crush and pulverize rocks and calcium carbonate stones recovered from the Brenta riverbed which, mixed with kaolin, served to create the mixture for ceramics. Hence the name pestasassi (stone crusher). Enamels and varnishes, necessary to give the product its unmistakable shine, were instead the result of processing quartz.
The Ceramics Festival
An ideal opportunity to spend a pleasant day in the charming and picturesque town in the Vicenza area, the Ceramics Festival includes free guided tours to discover the fine handcraft production process inside the restored mill, a spectacular example of industrial archaeology still functioning and maintained in excellent condition both structurally and in terms of the sophisticated complex of gears and mechanisms in wood and metal that make possible the noble craftsmanship that for centuries has characterized the cultural spirit and the backbone of the economy of the Nove community.
In addition to the educational itineraries at the museum site, every year in September the town organizes open-air exhibitions to engagingly disseminate the various phases and knowledge necessary for creating ceramic works, from the composition of the mixtures to the ability to manipulate them to obtain the desired shapes, to the no less delicate phases of coloring and firing, the result of experiences accumulated and spread over millennia.
The event is not only illustrative, but includes workshops designed to allow people of all ages to test themselves, thanks to the expert guidance of skilled masters, and experiment with your own hands in creating unique and original objects.
If you are wondering what to do in Nove and want to immerse yourself in a creative, carefree and lively dimension that pervades tree-lined avenues, squares and historic buildings that with their slow creaks and ancient mechanical movements seem animated with their own life, taking part in the Ceramics Festival will certainly be for you!
The Church of Saints Peter and Paul
Perched in the center of the town a few steps from the Brenta, facing a large square from which dark and majestic cedars rise, the neoclassical place of worship has a front divided by two pairs of composite semi-columns above which stand the architrave, frieze and triangular pediment adorned with a dentil pattern and crowned by three white statues.
In the central, wider section, the massive wooden portal is flanked by two pilasters surmounted by a large arch that dominates the center of the facade. In the side sections open two niches in which are placed the sculptures of the saints to whom the church is dedicated.
Decorated internally by invaluable pictorial masterpieces, the parish church rises near the imposing bell tower, a construction formed by a square-based shaft adorned with pilasters connected by hanging arches above which is inserted the belfry marked by refined Serlian windows. To conclude the vertical development of the structure is a metal statue towering on the spire resting on an octagonal drum with single-light windows.
