Como city of silk

The route starts from the Silk Museum which documents the industrial silk production of Como from the late nineteenth to the last decades of the twentieth century.

Machines, tools and fashion collections tell the artistic, historical and technological evolutions of a city that has had a strong textile vocation since the Renaissance.

The historical origins of silk processing in Como date back to the 16th century, but it is above all with industrialization in the second half of the nineteenth century in Lombardy that the city of Como conquers the European leadership of the production and export of precious fabrics.

The museum exhibits the entire process of silk processing in its 12 rooms, from the breeding of the silkworm to the dress made by moving from weaving to weaving, from dyeing-printing to finishing.

A unique and complete path of its kind to tell a story rich in color and precious fabrics.

The Como Silk Museum is located in Via Castelnuovo 9, located next to the historic Setificio Institute, ten minutes walk from the medieval city walls.

The path ideally continues with the Textile Museum that is located in “via per Cernobbio” (which is about 5 km away).
Created to make the collection of antique fabrics collected by Antonio Ratti available to the public, it is the final outcome of a process of collection, conservation and cataloging started for personal-professional purposes and culminating in the awareness of the public significance of what has been collected.
To date, the Museum’s collection has more than 3300 individual textile finds, and over 2,500 sample books that together illustrate the history of the fabric from the 3rd to the 20th century.

The route, at this point, cannot forget the shopping and ends with a visit to the historic silk shops located in the center and with the outlets at the city gates, where the creations of the most important international stylists can be found.

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