Crespi d’Adda is an attractive settlement, where the workers’ needs and the Enlightened contracted class necessities join together.
Crespi d’Adda is not just a settlement: the wish to realize an unique village, in which there are both the rational functionality and the aesthetical refinement, is revealed by each building and each architectural detail.
The workers’ houses were not inspired by the idea of “public housing”. The houses, originally painted all in the same colour, have Lombardy style decorations: ornaments in red tile, like the garret frets, the doors and windows mouldings and the stringcourses, were well visible on the unrelieved colour of the walls. Moreover the houses had nice lawns.
In the southern area, there are more decorated clerk’s houses, which were provided with outdoor staircases, galleries and wooden decorations. Walking towards the cemetery, there are liberty masterpieces: the managers’ villas, all different one from the others. Tile, terracotta, “ceppo di Brembate”, marble and travertine were used in these buildings.
On the top of this "housing hierarchy" there is the beautiful neogothic castle: the owner’s villa, where Crespi family was used to spend the summer holidays. It was really close to the factory and it perfectly shows the beauty, the functionality and the autonomy of this unique "happy work-island".
