Capriate San Gervasio

The town steps down to the left bank of the Adda in three terraces, each holding one of its historic settlements: San Gervasio d'Adda to the north, Capriate d'Adda in the middle, Crespi d'Adda at the southern tip of the Isola bergamasca. The first two became a single comune only in 1928, which is why the name is double; the oldest document naming the place dates from 948 and concerns land held in fief from the emperor by the bishop of Cremona.

The coat of arms tells the same story in pictures: the chevron has the shape of a roof truss, capriata in Italian, and plays on the first half of the name; three spindles stand for the cotton mill, the castle for the old fief of San Gervasio, the thunderbolt for the hydroelectric plant. The mill is the one at Crespi d'Adda, the workers' village begun by Cristoforo Benigno Crespi in 1877 and carried on by his son Silvio, with kitchen gardens, church, school, hospital and theatre around the factory, on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1995 as the best preserved in southern Europe.