Spazio Acqua
The museum of the oldest pumping station Spazio Acqua is the Milan Waterworks Museum, set up in the former Cenisio pumping station located at 39, via Cenisio; the oldest existing pumping station in Milan. The pumping station was designed by Mr. Minorini from the Municipal Engineering Department and built in 1905. It has operated from 14 June 1906 until 1980, when it housed the Maintenance and Emergency Services of the Waterworks, at the time still owned by the Municipality of Milan. It was converted into the Waterworks Museum in 1990. The museum closed again in 2003, the year when Metropolitana Milanese S.p.a. took over the Waterworks and Wastewater Services; it reopened in May 2008 for “Giornata degli impianti aperti” (the open-house day).
Architectural notes
The pumping station consisted of nine tanks with pumps submerged about 27 metres (89 ft) below the street level, drawing up to 300 litres (66 imp gal) of water per second. Originally, the pumping station also had a 30-metre (98-ft) tall metal chimney and there was an underground fuel depot.
Spazio Acqua is situated at the “top” of the block and is surrounded by a brick wall; it has two vehicle and three pedestrian entrances and also includes a green area. The station is a single-level, rectangular building; the longest side runs parallel to the street and has a solid wall structure. The building has a hipped roof with iron and wood trusses that support the tile covering. The exterior has large, round-arched windows, paired in the corners.
The double-height basement floor houses machinery and has a platform at street level. The external decoration is stern: worthy of note are the keystones of the archways that bear the symbol of the Milan Municipality and the metal frames of the windows. Neo-Romanesque elements can be seen in the alternating bands of white paint and open brickwork and in the brick profiling of the arches. Nowadays, the Museum covers the history of the Milan drinking water system and the opening of the first pumping stations. It also shows how the water system has been developed and how it kept growing with the City to cope with the increasing demand for drinking water.