CERNOBBIO, Villa Bernasconi

You are in the center of what is still called the Cittadella della Seta where, for decades, the area's silk production was concentrated.

You should know that Cernobbio owes a great deal to a great entrepreneur, Davide Bernasconi, who breathed new life into the local economy with the opening of the first Bernasconi textile factory in 1872. In just a few years, the company grew from 60 to 600 looms with almost 1,000 employees working in factories in the provinces of Como, Sondrio, Milan and Varese.

In Cernobbio, in addition to the warehouses for production activities, around his villa which was built in 1905 by the architect Alfredo Campanini, the entrepreneur also built housing for employees and provided services such as a kindergarten, which still exists today.

After the Second World War, the weaving industry went into crisis and in 1971 the Bernasconi company, which had already sold the villa in 1955, closed down for good.

Fortunately, after a long and painstaking restoration, this unique house museum has been open since 2017.

First of all, it is one of the most beautiful Art Nouveau villas in northern Italy, characterized by a unique exterior decoration of cement molding and ceramic tiles depicting the life cycle of the silkworm, amidst flowers, mulberry leaves and fruits. The various wrought iron details do not go unnoticed, including the elaborate railings of the balconies on the first floor and the turret, the work of one of the greatest wrought iron craftsmen of the time, Alessandro Mazzucotelli, who also created the beautiful balustrade of the indoor staircase.

The tour of the interior takes place through interactive, modern, immersive tools that lead to the discovery of the people who inhabited its rooms, thanks to historical documents, sensory experiences and multimedia content.

Here’s an interesting fact: In order to transform itself into a butterfly, a silkworm produces 20 to 30 concentric skeins of silk thread; the thread that makes up each of these skeins can be 300 to 900 meters long. After all the effort to prepare the cocoon, the silkworm turns into a moth, which, in addition to not having the ability to fly, dies after a short time... You could say that it’s a lot of effort for nothing!