Architecture

Paolo Carcano Silk Institute

Lake Como gets the postcards; this campus tells the story behind the silk. Here, fashion meant chemistry, weaving and homework long before it meant a polished shop window.

Address: Via Castelnuovo 5, Como
Area: Como, Italy

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Why it is worth the detour

Founded in 1868 to train textile workers, the Setificio helped Como compete in international fashion by educating chemists, designers and weaving specialists. Its present campus reflects the silk industry’s shift from inherited workshop skills to technical research and design education.

The Paolo Carcano Silk Institute is a historical educational institution in Como, established to advance the silk industry through specialized training. It highlights the city's rich textile heritage and ongoing innovation in design and research.

What else is close by

The nearest places we have written up, with straight-line distance from here.

50 m
Como Silk Museum
On Via Castelnuovo, the hunt comes down to one small detail: number 9. Find it, and silk gets the whole museum to itself.
150 m
Where the Cosia Disappears at Via Piave
Follow the Cosia beside the street and it pulls a neat vanishing act: one moment it is in the open, the next it is running beneath central Como toward the lake.
450 m
Via Anzani Workers’ Housing
On paper, this was a whole new district. Then the budget cuts arrived, and an entire neighbourhood shrank to two apartment blocks.
450 m
Casa Cattaneo-Alchieri
Look up: one apartment block is doing its best impression of a pile of private villas. Pietro Lingeri built the illusion with projecting terraces—then returned in the 1950s and disrupted his own skyline.
600 m
Casa Pedraglio
Mid-construction, Casa Pedraglio lost two structural bays. The apartment house carried on anyway, leaving Terragni’s composition with architecture’s equivalent of deleted paragraphs still showing.
800 m
Sant'Elia Nursery School
Como’s textile economy is gathering speed, the workers’ district is growing, and many mothers are heading to work. One practical question follows them out the door: who looks after the children?