Entering La Centrale dell’Acqua means setting off on a journey back in time. The one in Piazza Diocleziano is one of the oldest stations of the civic water supply system: inaugurated in 1906 at the same time as the World Expo. It is the sixth of seventeen stations designed by the Technical Office of the Municipality of Milan between 1889 and 1927 to respond to the growing demand for drinking water in a city that was constantly growing.
Thanks to the preservation and restoration project and to its requalification, La Centrale is today a bridge between the past and the future. It is a prestigious example of industrial archaeology, characterised by elegant Neo-Romanesque design and it is a civic testimony of the public infrastructure that the municipal administration was able to build.
Decommissioned at the end of the Eighties, in July 2018 the Station was given back to the city as a fine example of urban regeneration. A Museum dedicated to water and its management and protection, where you can find out about the integrated water service of Milan, one of the most efficient and advanced in Europe, and the technical and industrial culture that sustains it.
A teaching space for environmental education and scientific citizenship, where new generations
learn to experiment hands-on. A forge of energies in the service of the city: workshops, exhibitions, events, guided tours, debates, informative meetings open to all, free of charge.
La Centrale dell’Acqua was desired by MM, the public engineering company of the Municipality of Milan and operator of the integrated water service of the city. Founded in 1955 for the construction of the first metropolitan railway line, over the years its skills and know-how have multiplied. Currently MM is one of the leading water sector operators in Italy for volumes of water invoiced, the number one engineering company with total local public capital and the fifth public residential construction operator at the national level for the number of homes managed. A public company, therefore, with an important role in both the city and the world.
