The Stucky family originated some two hundred years ago from Münsingen, a small Swiss village in the canton of Bern. It was the 1930s when Giovanni Stucky, raised on bread and culture, decided to emigrate to Treviso - after a study trip to Italy - to open a small mill on the river Sile. His family was a family of artisans and gunsmiths, particularly fascinated by everything that could offer technology and mechanics again. The keyword was ambition, associated with a good dose of curiosity and resourcefulness.
His son Giovanni junior grows in an environment full of stimuli. For him, the road to the business world was therefore already leveled. Borghese, skilled speaker and educator, attends the best salons in Europe, thus perfecting his skills first in Italy and then in Switzerland, France, Germany and Hungary. Different experiences that lead him to develop new grain processing techniques to exploit the enormous potential given at the time by sea transport. It is therefore in Venice that the young Stucky decides to move after marriage to collect a mill and start an international grain trade. The first project of the famous Molino Stucky dates back a few years later: it is only in 1880, when his father is dead, that Giovanni acquires a vast complex on the island of Giudecca. In the following years the mill changed, becoming a true symbol of a city in full industrial expansion. Every day there were just under 1500 workers who went to the island to work over 2500 tons of flour produced. A car that did not even stop at night, thanks to that electricity that was used in this building for the first time for private purposes.
The power of Stucky was not only economic but also cultural and political, to the point that Giovanni was one of the promoters of the Biennale of the art and a reference point for high society. Despite the close link with Venice, the small village of Münsingen and all that Switzerland represented, were more than ever present in their memories. For this reason, over the years and generations have wanted to preserve their Swiss citizenship, the Protestant religion and the German language, cultivated thanks to the periodic returns to their homeland.
A bond that was not only virtual: from the machines operated by a Swiss company to the villa in the chalet-style countryside, everything referred to their origins. Not to mention the expansion, in 1895, of the mill by the German architect Ernst Wullekopf to whom we owe the characteristic neo-gothic façade, engraved with the owner's name, surmounted by a huge clock, and the pointed tower.
Shortly after the celebrations for the 25th anniversary of activity, the gesture of a madman abruptly interrupts the rise of this prince of millers. In 1910 Giovanni Stucky was assassinated at the railway station by a former worker with mental problems, with great dismay of the local population who considered him an authentic benefactor.
The inheritance is collected by his son Giancarlo who, forced to face the ruthless competition of the new rail transport, can not stop the slow but inexorable decline of the mill. The activities of the mill finally ceased in 1954, despite a long occupation of the factory by the workers who were trying at all costs to save the future of the factory and with it also their work.