The Molino Stucky was built in the second half of the 19th century by a man who was but partially Venetian - Giovanni Stucky, son of a Swiss émigré who had settled in Venice during Daniele Manin's uprising against the Austrian occupation.
Giovanni had started his career running a mill in the Mainland, near Treviso. His business went well, very well. He added several mills to the first one till he became the first flour producer in the Veneto. And then, animated by a spirit of risk and a vision for the future, he bought an area on the verge of La Giudecca - in those days a very poor suburb of Venice - and built there a 'monster' in the fashion of Northen architecture - the Molino Stucky (Stucky Mill).
The Molino - as it's narrated by Lavinia Cavalletti (a great grand-child of Giovanni) in her book The man who built the Molino Stucky published by LA TOLETTA Edizioni - worked 24 hours a day, 7 days per week and produced such an amount of flour that Giovanni Stucky soon became one of the first producers in Italy and by far the richest man in Venice.
From their little Palazzo near Sant'Eufemia the family moved into the grandiosity of Palazzo Grassi, the famous palace on the Grand Canal, which remained among the family properties till Giancarlo, the son of Giovanni, went bankrupt in the 30s, due to beaureaucratic problems and his aversion to the Fascist Regime.
In the Molino there was also a Pasta Factory and Giovanni expanded his business in shipping (which saved him much of the transportation costs, having the cereal seeds coming straight from Ukraine and Russia through the Adriatic), agriculture (he bought an extensive estate near Portogruaro) and many other activities, becoming one of the great Venetian industrialists together with Vittorio Cini and Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata.
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