Museo della Carta

Amalfi's Paper Museum occupies a former mill in the Valle dei Mulini, where the Canneto stream once powered a network of paper works. The museum preserves the craft of bambagina, the handmade writing paper associated with the town.

Why it matters

Paper-making became one of Amalfi's important industries alongside maritime trade. The museum documents this later chapter in the town's economic history and preserves machinery and knowledge connected with the production of rag paper.

What to notice

The Canneto's water was channelled through underground canals to drive mill machinery. Among the central tools was the macchina olandese, a beater that reduced rags to pulp. The production process also depended on drying rooms known as spandituri. An eighteenth-century census recorded eleven mills and eighty-three stone vats in the town.

Context and history

Historian Matteo Camera dated Amalfi's paper-making to the thirteenth century, though the question of whether the craft first reached Italy through Amalfi remains unsettled. The mills multiplied along the Valle dei Mulini, and the town's handmade paper became known as bambagina. Water and supply problems, isolation and difficulty modernising contributed to the industry's decline. The flood of November 1954 left only three of the sixteen mills then operating. One surviving mill became a museum preserving the craft and its equipment.