Rural Milan offers a journey to discover the cultural heritage of the Low Plain Lombarda, in an area between Milan, Abbiategrasso, Bereguardo and Pavia.
The tours, designed for cyclists, run along three canals (Grande, Pavese and Bereguardo) and cover a distance from the ancient Via Francigena.
Rural Milan offers a spatial interpretation through the social and cultural history of one of the most complex cultural landscapes of Lombardy.
The territory explored recounts the transformation, induced by man, a ‘nature area’ in a ‘rural landscape’.
alluvial soils, plenty of water and favorable climates have argued over the centuries human action, generating a complex balance between natural resources and human geography.
The exceptional nature of this equilibrium persists through continuous human care and maintenance activities.
Delving into rural Milan is like stepping into a store ‘open sky’. Knowledge, culture, practices, historical influences, social forms, architectures, experiences: a fragile balance between nature and human activities which over the centuries has shaped the countryside of Lower Lombarda.
So we can rediscover it not only an oasis of suburban relief, but also and above all – as he said the historical and political enlightenment Carlo Cattaneo – as ‘the fruit of a work of building the country’ lasted at least eight centuries.
On a journey through space and time, this guide reveals and provides the link between them some traces of the vast cultural heritage material and immaterial that characterizes the Lower Lombarda Plain.
The visitor is offered the selection of a set of places that tell the salient features of this heritage, interwoven with local cultures that are layered in the landscape (agriculture, plumbing and religious).
AESS – Archivio di Etnografia e Storia Sociale
di Regione Lombardia
email: aess@regione.lombardia.it
web: www.aess.regione.lombardia.it