For a century Sesto San Giovanni was Italy's factory: Breda, Falck, Marelli and Campari planted giant plants here, and its working-class density earned it the nickname "Italy's Stalingrad". Today those industrial cathedrals — gasometers, blast furnaces, the Falck workers' village — rank among the country's most important industrial-archaeology landscapes, now in full transformation.
Attached to Milan and served by the metro, it makes a practical, economical base for visiting the city. Villa Torretta, sixteenth-century and frescoed, is the surprise you don't expect among the chimneys.
The Sesto San Giovanni guide
Near Sesto San Giovanni
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
