The pyramid-shaped ice house

The pyramid-shaped ice house, built to keep the cold inside even in the warmest seasons and which nothing has to do with Egypt, is located near Pavoniere, in viale degli Olmi.

It’s a ten-meters high structure, built in 1796 on a project by Giuseppe Manetti, florentine architect at the court of Ferdinando III Lorraine.  

Inside the pyramid there are niches that used to be filled with snow, stored during winter or taken down from the Apennines, which was used during summer to make sorbets and icecreams, but also to conserve the cheese produced by the Grand Ducal Farm.

The structure was not, naturally, the only facility used for this purpose. In fact, since the Renaissance, many ice houses, usually cone-shaped, were collocated in the moats, by the city walls and exposed to the cold winds coming from north-west.