Unesco World Heritage since 1995, ideal industrial village, not even an hour from Milan, what is it? Crespi d’Adda is the best preserved working-class village in all of Southern Europe.
The best preserved industrial VILLAGE in the WORLD is located in LOMBARDY: paradise or hell village?
# The ideal city of work
Crespi d’Adda
In 1878 Cristoforo Benigno Crespi and his son Silvio Benigno, industrial captains of the area, decided to build the ideal city of work: a village where urban planning was focused on the presence of the factory, habitable only by the workers of the company and their families. In Crespi the head of the factory became master of the city and provided his citizens the necessary, by building a church, school, hospital, after-work places, theater, public toilets, grocery and clothing stores.
This is how Crespi, from the surname of a family in Northern Italy, became the name of a factory and then of an entire town. Where is this village? Crespi d’Adda is in the province of Bergamo, in an isolated position within a lowland bordered by 2 rivers, the Adda and the Brembo.
# Crespi d’Adda today: the best preserved industrial village in the world
Crespi d’Adda
Crespi d’Adda is still perfectly preserved, so much so that it has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The factory in a neo-medieval style with high chimneys and about 50 identical houses English-inspired are still there. The doctor’s house and the one of the priest watch over the entire village from above. The school and the church are in front of the factory. The main street is the metaphor of the working life and develops between factory and village, up to the cemetery. Crespi d’Adda is a village where everything is perfectly tidy.
# The country fame from horror movies
Crespi d’Adda
However, Crespi hides something creepy…If you do not live in neighbouring towns you certainly do not know the reputation of the Cemetery of Crespi d’Adda. It is a national monument and has the Chapel Crespi inside. In addition to that it is at the foot of a wasteland of small crosses. If cemeteries are not people’s favourite places, the Crespi one is certainly more terrifying than all the others, so much so that it is the protagonist of challenges of courage of many young people. The peculiarity of urban planning and the cemetery make Crespi a disturbing town, a little sinister. Crespi is also the topic of numerous legends: we talk about alleged hooded, satanic rites, sacrifices, kidnappings and assaults.
Despite so, Crespi d’Adda is the best preserved industrial village in the world, as well as a UNESCO heritage site. It became also the visiting card of Italy at Pavilion zero of Milan Expo 2015, where there was its miniature reproduction.
BEATRICE BARAZZETTI
