Travel Guide Crespi D'Adda

Classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1995, Crespi d'Adda (18 km south of Bergamo) is an astonishing example of a working-class village, the best preserved in southern Europe. Built at the end of the 19th century by the Crespi family, wealthy Lombard cotton growers, on the banks of the Adda river, the little town is the perfect realisation of an ideal urbanism. Although the Crespi family went bankrupt in the 1920s, the factory remained in operation until 2004. It is an expression of the industrial paternalism of the late 19th century, and is intended to be an ideal village, where the notions of urbanism, architecture and sociability are organized according to the work of the factory