This is the 19th century mill town just outside Villa Contarini, built when the villa was bought and restored by the Camerini family, landowners and industrialists who had recently grasped a knighthood. A mill town, also known as factory town or mill village, is typically a settlement that developed around one or more mills or factories (usually cotton mills or factories producing textiles). Between the 19th and the 20th centuries, Piazzola sul Brenta, near Padua, becomes a mill town and a fervent 'ideal city' at the hands of a large landowner: Silvestro Camerini, and especially his heir Paolo. A poor rural village, gathered around a princely villa in serious decline, Villa Contarini, is quickly industrialized, offering one of the most significant and original examples of the model company town the European scene has to offer. The entrepreneur is Paolo Camerini, heir to a family of recent aristocracy, brisk owner of one of the most significant land assets in the Veneto, an ambitious and cultured young man who knows how to combine the care of his 'city of work and harmony' with the political battles as a member of radical Giolitti era, and with the economic battles fought in favor of the creation, for example, of a large national consortium of chemical industry (which later became the Venetian chemical pole). Camerini showed he was well dialoguing with the great movement of contemporary design and construction of model industrial city in Europe and the United States, eager to cement economic growth with social harmony. The photo shows a very recent recovery of this area, which is a fine example of industrial archaeology and recovery of old industrial areas. The strong shadows are the outcome of a bright autumn day and the time, two o' clock p.m. Thanks for your kind comments.