The Olzino wash-house represents a symbolic place for our territory, part of the local tradition; in the past, women, who basically took care of household chores alone, had to go to rivers to wash their clothes.
Towards the end of the 19th century, however, they began to build the wash houses, public baths where it was easier to carry out this activity. The Olzino wash-house was then built to serve the homonymous residential nucleus.
It is a building consisting of a large stone tub, divided into several compartments, where a good number of women could work, covered by a wooden roof with tiles, useful to shelter the place from bad weather and the beating sun. The pool is bordered by a sloping edge, easy for washing clothes.
The Olzino wash-house dates back to 1898 and was built after an agreement between the owners of the land where it is located and the Municipality of Piazza Santo Stefano who modified the route of Via Fossato to give the right space to the building and exploit the adjacent waterway for the water supply. It represented for the women a work but also a meeting place, where, as rarely happened, the ladies had the opportunity to chat with each other freely.
The wash-house was renovated between 2017 and 2018, by the Association Face Coes (President Roberto Valtancoli), based on a project by the architect Davide Adamo. The intervention was made possible also thanks to the contribution of some companies and professionals and numerous volunteers who took the fate of the place to heart, committing themselves concretely during the renovation.