Carpiano

The marcita — the meadow flooded in winter with spring water, barely warm, so that the grass never stops growing and can be cut even in the frost — is said to have been made for the first time in Italy at Carpiano. It was one of the inventions that made the wealth of the low Milanese, and it is owed to the monks: in 1396 the duke of Milan assigned Carpiano to the Carthusians of Pavia, who turned it into a grangia, drained the land and brought their irrigation techniques with them. Today the water meadows have nearly vanished, replaced by rice, wheat and maize, and the springs that fed them are fewer every year.

Three thousand nine hundred and seventy-six inhabitants in the metropolitan city of Milan, inside the Parco Agricolo Sud. The village lies within the quadrilateral drawn by four great abbeys — Chiaravalle, Mirasole, San Bassiano and Viboldone — the ones that drained and irrigated this whole plain. The Lisone, which crosses the territory, is a small river dug by the Carthusians around 1300. Carpiano appears in documents as early as the year 836, and the name is said to come from the hornbeam, the tree that filled the woods around here.