MUMAT - Museo delle Macchine Tessili (ex Fabbrica Meucci)

MUMAT illustrates recent history of Val di Bisenzio and its industrial textile past, with important examples of archeology and the method of "recycling rags", linked to the city of Prato. The Museum exhibits admiring tools and textile machines dated between the end of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century: filandre, cardatura, ancient turbine of the factory fed by Bisenzio water, still active, and a very rare example of a wooden frame restored. The first attempt at a "widespread museum" linked to textile locations, MUMAT traces the history of "Carbonizzo Meucci" (1813): Franco Meucci built a mill with two millstones in the center of Mercatale, then re-adapted by his nephew, Amerigo Meucci, in 1897, with the addition of a carbonizzo for the regeneration of rags. Before the conversion to a lvera factory, the rooms above and millstones still housed an oven and a grocery shop with an adjoining warehouse for the wholesale cereals trade. The experience in the textile sector then put the milling activity into the background: in the '20s the chimney was built and there was a first expansion of the premises dedicated to the factory, where, in the' 30s, the first six spinning mills were installed for spinning. With the advent of the turbine (today restored and functioning) the operating processes were transformed, as well as hydraulic system, as it happened further with the advent of electricity. From a small company, Meucci Factory was transformed into a modern company in the 1930s. In 1955 there was the latest innovation, then followed the decline that led to the closure in 1988. The building, owned by the city, has been renovated to house urrent Museum.