The history of Sesto San Giovanni spans more than a millennium and, since the early twentieth century, is strongly characterized by the presence on Sesto's territories of some of Italy's largest factories and industries.
The earliest historical records of Sesto date back to the ninth century, when the town was a point of reference for the small neighboring municipalities. Over the centuries Sesto remained a predominantly agricultural town until the second half of the 19th century when the first spinning mills opened. With the second industrial revolution and the beginning of the 20th century, Sesto saw several companies settle in its territory: Breda, Campari, Ercole Marelli, and Falck, among others. The new factories attracted labor, the population increased, and the Sesto labor movement was born, which would make a fundamental contribution to the Resistance to the Nazi-Fascist regime, first with the great strikes of 1943 and 1944, then with the armed and clandestine struggle, until the Liberation.
In the 1960s, the industries of Sesto participated in the economic miracle, however from the late 1970s began the long and inexorable period of crisis for the steel and metallurgical industries that led to the decline of the large factories. Beginning in the 1990s, the so-called tertiarization of Sesto began, with new companies in the sector settling on the same land that once housed the large factories and much of which is being redeveloped.
From its origins to the 18th century
The origins of the town Probably founded as a cluster of peasant houses founded by the Romans, Sesto remained a tiny hamlet until the 19th century. Some sources attribute the founding of the first village to the Lombards, who arrived in Italy between 568 and 569 A.D.; this population was a permanent presence and dominated the territory of Sesto as well: the village of Cassina de' Gatti was originally called Sundro, from the Lombard term sundrium (land maintained and worked by masters on their own account and with the work of servants). The Lombards had ruled in neighboring Modicia at precisely the same time, so they could have expanded that rule to the territories of Sesto as well.
The earliest historical records concerning Sesto, however, date back to the 9th century and testify to the importance of the town to which the then neighboring towns, Cinexellum, Balsamum and Colonia, referred for legal or notarial matters. The fact that even then there were six churches in the territory indicates the importance of Sesto and its vastness of territory and population in relation to the neighboring villages.. Around the year 1000 it was "a fortified land" and had a defensive rampart and a rather large castle, which was not an expression of the power of a fiefdom, but rather of the power of some private family..
The origins of the name The name Sesto is given by the distance in miles from Milan in the Roman period, ad sextum lapidem, i.e., at the sixth milestone,.The case is not unique: the same toponymy method has been applied, in the area, for Quarto Oggiaro or Settimo Milanese. along an ancient Roman road that started from what would become Porta Nuova, continued along Via Manzoni, reached Greco to arrive in Sesto via the present Riccio and Cavallotti streets, to the center of the village and from there continued to Monza..
The appellation San Giovanni was added only later: the most credited hypothesis is from 1100, when it was written next to the name of the municipality to indicate the dependence of the Sesto territory to the Basilica of San Giovanni in Monza. In fact, from that year Monza exercised the widest jurisdiction over Sesto. However, already a century earlier some documents mention the appellation Giovanni: Sexto qui dicitur Johannis in a document from 1007. Throughout the Middle Ages, the town was known as Sesto Zohanno, Sesto Zane, or more frequently Sesto Johanno,. although, until the late 18th century, the town was commonly referred to as Sesto di Monza..
A less credited hypothesis regarding the origins of the name, would make the birth of the name Sesto coincide with that of the appellation San Giovanni. According to this hypothesis, Sesto would not be a toponym derived from the indication of a milestone, but rather would relate to the presence in the territory, already in the early 10th century, of a church dedicated to Saint Stephen, perhaps the present church of Santa Maria Assunta, referred to in the ecclesiastical documents of the time as Sextum Templum Johannis, that is, the sixth of the churches dependent on the Basilica of San Giovanni in Monza.
The birth of the municipality of Sesto
In the 13th century, the parish church of Sesto was the only one of Ambrosian rite subject to the Basilica of Monza.Storia dei comuni della provincia di Milano, p. 408 There was a monastery there dedicated to St. Nicholas that was said to have been founded by Sister Marcellina, sister of St. Ambrose. The earliest evidence of a municipal order can be found in a document dated 1244 included in the "Acts of the Municipality of Milan." In that document Sesto San Giovanni is mentioned as a municipality. In the "Statutes of the Waters and Roads of the County of Milan made in 1346," Sesto San Giovanni turns out to be part of the court of Monza: between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries such was Monza's dominance over the territories of Sesto that it arrogated to itself the right to elect all the offices of the municipality, promulgate proclamations and inflict punishments, and for these reasons frequent disagreements and disputes arose between the inhabitants of Sesto and the canons of Monza; such disputes, the order of the day throughout the period when Sesto was in the Monza orbit, required in some cases the intervention, to settle matters, of the Archbishop of Milan and even the Pope.. Only in the 15th century, under the pontificate of Pius II, was Sesto freed from the Monza jurisdiction, due to the appointment of the first parish priest in Sesto by the Archbishop of Milan..
Sesto was several times involved in armed conflicts: in 1259 Martino della Torre, lord of Milan, gathered his army there to meet Ezzelino III da Romano who was trying to seize the Iron Crown in Monza. On June 11, 1323 it was the camp of King Robert with a strength of 30,000 infantrymen and 8,000 cavalrymen, who clashed with Galeazzo and Marco Visconti. The nearby locality of Bicocca degli Arcimboldi saw the clash between the Visconti and the Torriani and later in 1522 a battle between the imperial army led by Prospero Colonna and the French commanded by Lautrech.
The Renaissance
In the 16th century Sesto saw the construction or expansion of some of its historic villas - Villa Torretta, Villa Pelucca, and Villa Visconti d'Aragona. The original buildings were for agricultural use, reflecting a markedly rural local economy. During the Renaissance, a number of noble Milanese families decided to purchase land and villas to turn them into ville di delizia, where they could spend holiday periods a short distance from the city, in the quiet of a village whose time was marked by the rhythms of work in the fields. The new villas were frescoed by various artists of the time: Simone Barabino at the Oratorio di Santa Margherita near the Torretta, Agostino Santagostino at the Villa Visconti d'Aragona, and Bernardino Luini, who frescoed the Pelucca with the famous cycle of the Villa La Pelucca frescoes, most of which is now preserved at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan and in other major international museums, such as the Wallace Collection in London, the Louvre in Paris and the Condé Museum in Chantilly.
18th century The 1751 census documents that the municipality had 725 inhabitants and was administered by a general council, convened at least once a year. In the second half of the century, reforms introduced by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria rationalized administrative structures and revived social and economic life,. and the municipality of Sesto San Giovanni came directly under the jurisdiction of the podestà of Milan. In 1771 the inhabitants of Sesto San Giovanni numbered 1,682.
19th century In 1809 the suppressed municipalities of Cassina de' Gatti and Sant'AlessandroSant'Alessandro would later be united with Monza, in 1811 were aggregated, not united, to the municipality of Sesto San Giovanni, and the population reached 2,248. From the beginning of the century, Sesto was confirmed as one of the favorite destinations of Milanese nobles, who chose these territories for their country residences, from where they could manage the plots of land they owned. The whole territory, or almost all of it, was owned by about thirty families: among the most important were the Zorns, the Visconti, the Mylius, the Serbelloni-Busca, the Puricelli Guerra, the Vigoni and the De Ponti; the latter were not nobles, but farmers who grew rich to the point of buying the villa and land from the Visconti d'Aragona. By the end of the century the De Ponti family were among the most important landowners in Sesto, with properties ranging from Rondò to Torretta.. The local economy was thus based on agriculture and silkworm breeding, which would lead to manufacturing development from the second half of the century. Land tenure was under sharecropping contracts until the mid-nineteenth century, when the vast agrarian estates would be divided to be managed by less numerous families and with colonial contracts, which were shorter and more adaptable to the actual harvests. The great increase in population at the end of the century would cause a surplus of labor in the countryside, which would be absorbed by the establishment of manufacturing..
The spinning mills
In 1832 the first spinning mill in Sesto was opened by Giuseppe Puricelli Guerra in a courtyard of his family's villa, Villa Puricelli Guerra. In 1840 it was modernized with the introduction of steam-powered "pulping basins," a technology of excellence for the time. These innovations would contribute to overcoming the artisan concept and provide employment for a fair number of people. In the following decades other spinning mills were opened: that of Enrico Mylius, the Savini (later Gaslini, as it was acquired by the Gaslini nobles, a family from Milan), on the old road to Monza, the De Ponti inside the Villa Visconti d'Aragona, the Gnocchi, and the Chiavelli at the Valdimagna farmstead. In 1878 there were seven spinning mills in Sesto San Giovanni, employing 738 people. In 1840 Italy's second railway line after the Naples-Portici, the Milan-Monza, came into operation; it had an intermediate station at Sesto, destined to extend to the Swiss border and to connect, from 1882, with central Europe through the Gotthard Tunnel. In 1876 the Milan-Monza tramway was also inaugurated, parallel to the railway, initially horse-drawn, and later electrified by the Edison company in 1901. This infrastructure connected Sesto to Milan and to European markets. The spinning mills steadily modernized, production increased, the first machinery was introduced, and a slow economic transformation of the town began in the second half of the century: alongside agriculture, processing a product related to it, the silkworm, Sesto industry was born. Likewise, a unique humus for future industrialization was formed: when large industries arose, the spinning mill worker was ready to switch to another type of processing..
The villas