Venetian period · Water and mills · Industry and trade
The Venetians expand the mills
1687–1714 Probable
After the Peloponnese came under Venice in 1687, the Venetians greatly expanded the mills of Lerna. They built connected vaulted granaries, fitted new grinding machinery and surrounded the complex with a stone dam with corner towers, which held back the spring water as a mill lake. A good stretch of this dam can still be seen along the shore.
Read the full story: From spring to pump: how the water of Lerna made Myloi
- Threads
- Water and mills, Industry and trade
- Certainty
- Probable likely, but not fully proven
Sources
- Ephorate of Antiquities of Argolida, «Τείχος της Βενετικής Περιόδου» (2023), argolisculture.gr
- visitmyloi.gr, «From spring to pump: how the water of Lerna made Myloi»
Also in this period
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1688–1715
A monopoly on the ferry, coffee and eels
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10 July 1694
A Venetian field camp 'at the Mills of Argos'
On 10 July 1694 the Venetian commander-in-chief in the Morea, Marino Michiel, dated a dispatch to the Senate 'from the camp at the Mills of Argos'. Venetian and French writers used that name both for Kefalari near Argos…
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1698
A water-driven gunpowder workshop
In 1698, according to the Ephorate of Antiquities, the Venetians added a gunpowder workshop to the mills, driven by the water of the springs. How long it worked is not known.
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1700
Grain by boat, flour back to Nafplio
In his introduction to the Venetian cadastre of Argos, the engineer Francesco Vandeyk describes a castle on a high hill near the sea, called Anasiri, or by many 'Old Argos' or 'Helen's castle'. Below it, he writes, water…