If in Urbino, at the National Gallery of the Marche, you can admire the tempera painting known as The Ideal City, in the province of Bergamo, and more precisely in Crespi d’Adda , a hamlet of Capriate San Gervasio, you can admire an incredibleindustrial village, a real ideal city dedicated to blue-collar work .
Description
Today it has become a Unesco site, the Crespi Village is a microcosm, an introverted and timeless place, an implacable metronome that fascinates and amazes the visitor. Like a message from the past, this place tells and testifies to an idea that has become a concrete reality. A fascinating story that unfolds in a place where architecture, time and space, almost by magic, have become an incredible whole.
Crespi d’Adda, objectively, if it were not for its past as a workers’ village, it would be nothing more than a dot on a road map, a brief and marginal annotation of history. Instead, today, this small town that rises in the province of Bergamo, is found to be counted among the World Heritage Sites, a recognition that Unesco awarded to Crespi d’Adda in 1995.
Not for nothing, it is precisely here that the visitor, the tourist and the lover of history and architecture, find himself admiring an idea that has become a reality . It is not, therefore, only an exceptional and fantastic representation of a workers’ village, it is not exclusively a testimony of the past among the best preserved in all of southern Europe, but it is the vivid representation of a shining idea.
All this is due to the Crespi family, who decided to create a place near their textile factory where employees and their families could be hosted . A utopian idea that became reality and which today is known as the Crespi Village.
Much of the value and charm enclosed in the Crespi Village is precisely in the fact of being an incredible architectural complex capable of significantly illustrating what was the birth of modern industry in our country. Therefore, walking through its intact architectural and urban aspect, one can immediately find oneself projected into a particular and delicate historical moment.
From an uncultivated land near the river, this village was born in 1876, a place in existence until 1929. A project that, by virtue of its excellent state of conservation, allows you to be connected to the idea, value and sense that the Crespi Village knows how to convey.
An orderly plan which, in conclusion, underlines what had been the design premises, the lines that demarcated the residential area, the public utility area and the industrial one, including common buildings such as, for example, schools, the theater, the church the hotel and the after work, but also the public baths, the thermal center, the small hospital and the fire station.
Built on a human scale, the Crespi Village is not only an architectural model of Italian industry, but also a magical place where you can breathe a different idea of business and relationships between men, workers and entrepreneurs . An idea of the world that should still be taken as an example today.
Prices and Reductions
Access to the Crespi Village is free and open.
How to get
The Crespi Village is located in Crespi d’Adda (fraction of Capriate San Gervasio) in the province of Bergamo. To get there it is necessary to take the A4 Turin-Trieste motorway, exiting at Capriate. Continue towards Trezzo sull’Adda and then towards Crespi d’Adda. The most convenient parking inside the village is located in Piazzale Vittorio Veneto.
