Cittadella della Seta

Between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the engineer Davide Bernasconi founded a silk industry in Cernobbio and, as an smart entrepreneur, commissioned the construction of a real industrial citadel. There are two residential villas, Villa Bernasconi and the villa that currently houses the Town Hall, smaller villas for managers and residences for workers, a kindergarten for workers’ children; sheds for weaving and dyeing, buildings for administrative offices.

From the end of the 19th century to the 1950s, the Citadel of the Silk of Cernobbio was a world apart from the “touristic” Cernobbio, but it contributed equally to the growth of the city. Today the area is an interesting site of industrial textile archaeology, the only one in the Como area.