Switch water on - The Eco Museum

The Northern Adda Park and Leonardo’s Eco-museum
Physical Geology
The environment overstepped by the Adda and included in “Parco Adda Nord”, going from Lecco to Truccazzano, is featured by the presence of a river-glacial terrace system. The Neozoic glacier was extended from the Alpes to the Plain, thus creating a fantastic morainic amphitheatre. The glacier drew back and the river dug its own bed slowly carrying with itself a lot of morainic debris. The areas consist both of the old river-glacial depots (and locally, especially between Paderno and Trezzo, by the conglomeratic packs, eroded by the river which has made abrupt vertical wall) and of younger depots, sandy and pebbly material, between Cassano and Truccazzano.

The vegetetion:
After the glacial ages, the climate allowed big and wide forests to expand also in the lowland. The wide woods, which covered the lands around the river until last century, had been reduced by the human community, which devoted to both agriculture and industry.
However on Torre Island and Serraglio Island still today the vegetation is luxurious in the damp areas.
There are many meadows and trees like: black alders, poplars, birches, willows, oaks and robinias. In the undergrowth there are: hornbeams, chestnut-trees and hazels.
In the marshy areas tourists could see the most beautiful aquatic flowers: water-lilies, yellow lilies and lilies-of-the-valley.
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Fauna
In this environment a rich fauna finds refuge. The most wonderful amphibious of the place is the “Tree Frog of the green coat” with black stripes on the hip. We can also find many “Green Frogs”, which are very noisy, and the “Brown Temporary Frog”. Also the birds are many: swans, ducks, royal-wild ducks, coots, grey carrion-crows, common gulls but also the magnificent grey heron, whose specimens are becoming more and more numerous.

The park and its history:
The river and the surrounding lands are rich in very meaningful historical sings belonging to different and far-away ages.
The bridge which parts the Garlate lake and the Olgiate one, for example, was built where a very old Roman bridge set Como-Aquileia Way, one of the most important way to cross the river in the past.
The same river marked the boundary between Milan Dukedom and the Venice Republic and was also an important cultural and commercial way towards Milan and Bergamo.
Along the Adda’s course there are many fortification works which were built during the centuries and were useful to check the advance of the enemies’ troops.
Trucazzano Castle, of which today only the longobard fortress built by Queen Teodolinda remains, was very ancient and the tradition tells that it was the theatre of many fights between Federico Barbarossa, the Torriani Family and the Visconti Family.
Again according to the tradition Carlo Magno resided in Cassano castle which was, like the Trucazzano one, the theatre of many bloody battles.
In 1164 Federico Barbarossa, during the fights against the Milanese people, stayed in Corneliano Bertario castle near Trucazzano.
Brivio castle in the XIII century gave shelter to Milanese nobles who were banished from the city by Milanese people.
The walls destroyed by the Milanese army, were reconstructed by the Visconti Family in the following century.

The canals
In 1457 Francesco Sforza made Bertola from Novate dig the famous Martesana canal. In 35 years, from 1439 to 1475, 90 kilometres of navigable canals were built near Milan. No city has ever built so many canals. They had finished this task for few years when Leonardo from Vinci came to Milan, here he extended the canal network by linking up Milan with the Alping valley of Valtellina.
As soon as Leonardo arrived in Milan Ludovico il Moro charged him with the duty to find out how to link up the Como lake with Milan. We have found some of the genius’s writings about this problem. He thought to build a big barrier on the river Adda near Tre Corni to avoid the rapids of the river. The dam would get the river level higher: it would be used to irrigate the fields nearby and it would be navigable from Brivio to Trezzo. In the mid sixteen century another person proposed a solution: the painter and engineer Giuseppe Meda dug the Castle basin to overcome the 23,76 metres of difference in height, a basin which will be called Paderno canal later. This structure was so difficult to carry out that, when two centuries later the Austrian government constructed it, the Lombardy minister Carlo Firmian had to change the initial project: he built six basins in different levels which were four or six metres high. The work began in 1591, the Austrians started doing it again in 1773 and they finished it in 1777.
Ludovico il Moro first linked up Milan with the river Adda. Although the navigation was very hard because the water was highly used for irrigation, only in 1574 the Martesana canal was renovated, it was made wider and safer and Molgora canal was built. To increase the value of this area studied by Leonardo, the North Adda Park, the “Committee for the restoration of the Adda sluices” and the Milan Province with Lombardy Region support have asked and obtained the European Union recognition to include this territory in the “ Canaux Historiques Voies d’Eau Vivantes” project.
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The Industrial Archaeology
Everybody considers the iron bridge in Paderno d’Adda a great symbol of the Italian industrial archaeology and one of the most interesting constructions of the nineteenth-century Italian engineering. It was built between 1887 and 1889 by the “Società Nazionale delle Officine Savigliano” following a Swiss engineer’s project, Rothlisberger’s one; it is 266 metres long and it is run by a railway and the provincial road to Bergamo. This enormous structure, representing one of the most interesting evidences of those times in which the iron was the symbol of the human progress, provoked a lot of wonder in people who looked at that. The most ancient industrial monument among those which remain along the river Adda is the firm “Velvis” in Vaprio d’Adda. At that time the factory was the property of the society “Sioli Dell’Acqua & Co.” founded by Carlo Sioli, Agostino Dell’Acqua and the duke Visconti di Modrone, from whom it took the name Velvis, which means “Velluti Visconti”. In Cassano d’Adda there is the national hemp-mill and flax-mill at first destined for the spinning, later, completed with the department for the weaving and the bleaching of flax and hemp. Before that in Cassano d’Adda there was a spinning mill until, in 1873, the society L.C.N., which already owned a factory in Fara d’Adda, bought the premises organizing the firm like the English ones, both in the design project and in the machines, becoming one of the most important flax-mills in Europe.
In Brivio, just close to the river Adda, there is an important example of industrial architecture. It is the spinning-mill Molinazzo, built before 1875. The spinning-mill Abegg in Garlate was built in 1841 and, while first belonging to Gaetano Bruni and the Gnecchi family, in 1887 was bought by the Abeggs from Zurich.
When people stopped working in this factory, about in 30s, the firm continued to carry out the operations of rewind until 1950, when, thanks to Carlo Job, responsible of the Abegg group, a part of the factory became the first part of the present silk museum in Garlate. “Parco Adda Nord” includes the flat lands overstepped by the Adda, nearby the Como Lake. In this part, the river flows among various and unique landscapes. The park was estabilished in 1983; it is big 5580 hectares. In the park there are many interesting patterns of hydraulic engineering work: the “Iron Bridge” in Paderno is very famous. At the same time, Crespi d’Adda could be an example concerning the industrial organization of the last century.
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