History of Sesto San Giovanni

[14] 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.

[1] 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.

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.

In the second half of the century, reforms introduced by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria rationalized administrative structures and revived social and economic life,[17] and the municipality of Sesto San Giovanni came directly under the jurisdiction of the podestà of Milan.

[20] 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.

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.

Sesto also participated in the African War of 1896, and fellow citizen Gaetano Gaslini, an army lieutenant and silver medalist for military valor, died in Adwa.

[31] Toward the end of the century, the Sesto silk industry experienced a period of sharp decline: textiles developed further north, where the slopes favored the exploitation of water as a driving force.

[33] In 1891 opened O.S.V.A., or Officine Sesto San Giovanni & Valsecchi Abramo, a historic Italian manufacturer of hardware, household, faucets and, later, electrical appliances.

During the period of World War I, the city had a fairly lukewarm attitude and, on the part of the working-class and proletarian classes, there was a decided adherence to non-interventionist ideas and issues.

[41] With the development of industry, Sesto San Giovanni was hit by a strong wave of migration and became a seething melting pot: professionalism, technical knowledge, cultures, ideologies and policies that were different from each other, yet all converging on labor issues, began to confront and enrich each other.

[42] In 1919 the Chamber of Labor was opened in Sesto San Giovanni and the first riots and strikes began, aimed at improving wages, working conditions, and in 1920 the first occupation of the factories by blue-collar workers was recorded,[43] in what is remembered as the Two Red Years.

[45] By 1926 working-class unity was being strengthened and went beyond the parties: anarchists, communists, socialists and Catholics found themselves united in an underground and difficult struggle that increasingly took on the features of a true clandestine organization.

[47] The economy restarted around 1935, coinciding with the Ethiopian War and Fascist Italy's support for Franco's troops in Spain, when Sesto industry converted (again) to arms production.

Political life and opposition to Fascism continued on the two fronts, clandestine and legal, and at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the workers' reaction was strong, so much so that a group participated in the International Brigades, while in the factories armaments destined for the Francoists were sabotaged.

In 1939 the dual anti-fascist organization was dismantled by the police, but it was soon reorganized, and with Italy's entry into World War II the struggle against fascism became open and declared.

[47] However, this opposition that gathered different mindsets, from communists to Catholics, had yet to find a common denominator such as to pose a real threat to fascism, but it would be the fertile social fabric for the general uprising and popular insurrection of the years to come.

[48] The advent of the Badoglio government was at first welcomed as positive, given also the tolerance toward anti-fascist parties and movements, but in the factories opposition to the continuation of military intervention was still very strong and organized.

[50] Domestic political events, including the fall of Mussolini, the flight of the King, the proclamation of the Social Republic and especially the formation of the first partisan groups, had led to the occupation of the factories by the Germans.

To keep alive the refusal to cooperate and stimulate the political struggle, the demands posed were still economic in nature, such as increased wages, rations of bread, rice and sugar.

Patriotic Action Groups, the GAP, were also formed in Milan, and the first nucleus saw the light just inside the factories of Sesto San Giovanni, more precisely at the V section of Breda.

Alongside the communist and socialist-inspired SAP and GAP, a militant anti-fascism also developed in Sesto among the Catholics of the People's Brigades, which would be of fundamental contribution to the partisan struggle.

Six of these fifteen antifascists were leaders of the Sesto resistance: Giulio Casiraghi, Domenico Fiorani, Umberto Fogagnolo, Renzo Del Riccio, Libero Temolo and Eraldo Soncini.

The partisans killed in these clashes were four and dozens were the wounded assisted in the field hospital activated by Don Mapelli in the parish kindergarten, near the San Luigi oratory.

In total, there were 325 fallen citizens, or at any rate workers in the city's factories, who died in prison, by firing squad, fell in combat or in Nazi concentration camps.

[68] In the immediate postwar period, Sesto found itself in very serious economic and social problems: there was a serious shortage of food, and some state warehouses were requisitioned by the CLN-led junta; those who hid foodstuffs for the black exchange were prosecuted.

[70] In 1954 Sesto San Giovanni was awarded the Title of City, with Presidential Decree of April 10, 1954, signed by Luigi Einaudi and countersigned by Mario Scelba.

[71] From 1953 until 1962, Sesto industries participated in the Italian economic miracle: production increased and a market for mass consumer goods (radios, televisions, refrigerators, automobiles, etc.)

Despite labor union struggles and demands, companies in Sesto faced these difficulties by drastically reducing staff and launching radical corporate restructuring and reorganization plans.

[80] The Sesto San Giovanni of today is no longer identifiable as the "citadel of factories" or as the "little Manchester," nor perhaps as the "Stalingrad of Italy": the economic and political events that have marked its history, especially in the last century, nevertheless allow it to preserve its own originality.