Crespi d’Adda, the celebrated late 19th-century workers’ village, will mark 30 years since its recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage site on December 5, 2025. Founded as a settlement for the employees of Cristoforo Crespi’s cotton mill, the village has remained almost untouched since its creation — the upcoming regeneration will be the first major transformation in 125 years of history.
Domus once described Crespi d’Adda as a place suspended in time: a village built seemingly from nothing, on one of the most challenging plots of land in the Bergamo area, with the cotton mill as its beating heart. Conceived by industrialist Cristoforo Crespi for his workers, the village integrated housing, collective services, the owner’s villa, and the cemetery — offering a unique testimony of industrial and social life at the time, as well as a precedent for later utopian workers’ settlements by Italian entrepreneurs, such as Adriano Olivetti’s Ivrea designed by Cesare Cattaneo.
