Fornace Veschi di Valle Aurelia

The Veschi brickworks is located right in front of the Valle Aurelia metro station and is one of the 18 brick factories that, since ancient times, using the clay extracted from the quarries of the Monti di Creta, or lower down Monte del Gallo-Porta Cavalleggeri, provided material to build first Papal Rome and then that of the Savoys of the Kingdom of Italy.Since the early 1800s, a settlement known as the 'borgo dei fornaciari' (kiln district) had grown up near the furnace, which in the 1950s housed more than two thousand people, later reduced to less than a thousand in the 1970s.The Fornace remained active until the 1960s, then fell into a state of abandonment until its recent restoration as part of the urban renewal project, which saw the construction of the Aura shopping centre.