Paper Mill Valley | Paper Museum

Toscolano Maderno is a town and resort on the west shore of Lake Garda at the point where the River Toscolano, sometimes called the Torrento Toscolano, enters the lake. The first evidence of papermaking in the area is from the late fourteenth century, and many mills subsequently took their power from the fast-flowing waters. During the Renaissance of the sixteenth century books published by the Paganini family in Toscolano Maderno and in Venice were printed on paper made in the valley. The last mill in the area ceased production in 1962, but in 2002 a project was launched with the support of the municipality and of former workers to establish a cultural centre including a museum in the largest paper mill in the valley which was duly restored in 2005-07.

The museum shows the history of papermaking from its beginnings until the twentieth century. There are replicas of the equipment used to make paper by hand between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, displays illustrating the mechanisation of production during the Industrial Revolution, and some of the machines used to make paper in the vicinity in the twentieth century. There is an important collection of watermarks from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and a comprehensive display of picture postcards.