In 1742 Mr. Filippo Tidi (family who owned water mills on the Rio Ardenza) began building six windmills and ten years later one was finished and another is “more than mezzanine”. In reality, at the end only four structures will actually be built as identified in some maps of the Livorno coast, for use by sailors, relating to portolans (manuals for navigation), in which the mills of the Benedetta Valley, for their eminent position, they are taken as a reference and “target” for crossing the Secche della Meloria and entering the port.
In the first map dated 1769 the mills were still three, while in the subsequent one of 1795, the mills became four. They were used to grind the wheat produced in the not too flat lands.
“… We saw a windmill already finished, and another more than mezzanine, of six that Signor Filippo [Tidi] had built along the top of one of these mountains. They are all of a very judicious, comfortable, and safe design, made by the already Vairynge machinist of S.M.C. and professor of mechanics and experimental philosophy in the Academy of Nancy, then in Florence. This latest invention of windmills would be of great relief to some provinces of Tuscany … “. [Quote Minutelli Collection, year 1752: Targioni Tozzetti “Observations made to the Benedetta Valley” (refers to a trip from 1742)]
