The Naviglio of Pavia, a navigable canal, was built during the Renaissance to link the city of Milan with the sea and was particularly important during the years of Napoleonic rule, which ended in 1819 with the return of the Hapsburgs. The waters of the canal were used, in addition to navigation and irrigation, to drive watermills and provide power for the factories sited along the secondary canals.

Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the first Lombardy industrial activities opened, the Naviglio of Pavia enjoyed a golden period and a complex, important economic system developed along this thirty-three kilometre stretch of waterway.