Ancient wash house

It is a public place, intended for hand washing of clothes. The wash house is made possible by the fact that Ponti sul Mincio is an area particularly rich in springs.

April 1926 – some women from Ponti report to the mayor Garofalo that the water in the public fountain where drinking water is drawn is cloudy and dirty with dirt. The problem lay in the fact that the drinking water pump of the fountain was drawing dirty water from the nearby wash house. It was therefore decided to move the wash house further east onto adjacent land.
The land was donated by Countess Metilde D’Emilei Viganò and the project of the new wash house was approved by the technical engineer. Silvio Brugnoli.

The project includes a sink divided into 3 tanks: 2 small ones for washing clothes and 1 large one for rinsing. The construction is in concrete except for the profiles of the basins which are in Sant’Ambrogio stone.
The water comes out of a drain and ends in the Dugale ditch which then flows into the Mincio river.
The works were carried out by the “Roberto Medaina” company of Ponti sul Mincio in 1930.
In January 1932 the public wash house was inaugurated.

The wash house was made possible by the fact that Ponti sul Mincio is an area particularly rich in resurgences: the land to the south is in fact occupied, in depth, by a mass of impermeable clay which forces the underground water to re-emerge to the surface.
The spring that feeds the wash house is so abundant that in addition to the water that ends up in the wash house, there is a side pipe that discharges the excess water.
The spring water that supplies the washhouse has a constant temperature, both in winter and summer, between 13 and 14 degrees.

During 2016 the wash house was renovated.
The upper grates of the sink have been fixed, the underlying wall has been renovated and now restored with the use of osmotic mortar, which waterproofs the walls, preventing them from getting wet and above all from remaining wet. All the pillars were then restored as well as the internal tanks which had holes in the bottom, and the overflow and secondary drain were redone. The external front of the wash house has also been arranged and a mechanical shutter has been placed, as well as some lights that illuminate the area in the evening.

The wash house is still often used today and the women of the town continue to wash their laundry in this corner of local history to experience this wonderful tradition every day.
In the washrooms it is only allowed to wash clothes with Marseille soap or natural soaps. Detergents are prohibited.
Bathing, washing and carrying out personal cleaning operations are prohibited.

To visit the ancient wash house, access is always free.