To provide a felt for paper manufacture capable of improving the surface properties and smoothness of the manufactured paper, having excellent strength and usable over a long period.

The paper manufacture felt 1 is composed of a base cloth 3, a surface web layer 21 and a back web layer 22. The base cloth 4 has a three- layer structure consisting of a surface layer woven fabric 31 having a plain- weave texture or a 5/1 Kuzushi-ori (a weaving method to form a pattern with irregularly arranged motifs) texture, a back layer woven fabric 33 and an intermediate layer 32 between the surface and back layers. The surface and back layers 21, 22 are bonded to the upper surface of the surface layer woven fabric and the lower surface of the back layer woven fabric of the base cloth 3 by a conventional method such as needling. The intermediate layer 32 is a nonwoven fabric having yarns 321 arranged exclusively in lateral direction nearly parallel to each other and free from knuckle part formed by the weaving into the fabric. The warp of the back layer woven fabric is obtained by twisting 2-10 polyamide monofilament yarns having a diameter of 0.08-0.30 mm.