Rooftile and Brickworks Museum N. & S. Tsalapatas, Industrial manufacturing museum in Volos, Greece

The Rooftile and Brickworks Museum N. & S. Tsalapatas is a former factory that manufactured roofing tiles and bricks and now operates as a museum. It displays the entire production process with the machines, tools, and materials that were used to make these construction products.

The Tsalapatas brothers founded the brick and tile factory in 1926 on a site of 22,000 square metres. At its peak it employed 250 people and its installed machinery reached 300 horsepower, producing many types of bricks and roof tiles. Production ended in 1978. In 2004 the Piraeus Group Cultural Foundation took on the creation of a museum in the main factory building of 5,000 square metres, and it opened two years later.

The museum shows how roofing tiles and bricks were once made by hand and what role these materials played in building Greece. The exhibits preserve the craft techniques that workers passed down through generations.

The museum is located in central Volos and shows the work steps in the original factory setting. Plan enough time to understand the different stages of production, and wear comfortable shoes since you will walk through the space extensively.

The museum contains an original Hoffmann kiln, a special industrial furnace design that operated almost without interruption over the decades. This type of kiln was built so robustly that it shut down only twice during its entire working history.