Opened in January 2016, the Materia Museum was born from an idea of ​​the Colle Group. This is not a traditional museum, but an instrument to form environmental awareness and a new way to communicate ethical, historical, artistic and technological contents.
The building which houses the museum and its external parts have been used since the Middle Ages for productive purposes, hosting, at different times, a three millstones mill, a gualchiera (fulling mill), an iron foundry, a copper machine and a combing machine. In the twentieth century, the back bodies were added in which a carbonizzo (carbonize) and a dye were placed. All this also tells the textile history of the Bisenzio Valley and Prato in general. Water is the protagonist of the museum and can be considered as a raw material, both in the time of dumpling and in modern times as essential for all dyeing processes. The dominant note is modernity. The two main experimental attractions are the Confessional, where visitors can reflect on their role in environmental pollution, and Increased Reality, where you are catapulted in a sort of journey over time.
In the underground rooms, the so-called "hell", where the hydraulic wheels were housed, there is a nice wooden ritrecine (hydraulic wheel) and very rare remains of a vertical cast iron turbine of the end of the nineteenth century. Outside, is placed an old Kaplan turbine with fixed blades, and some ancient turbines such as the Girard and Francis one.