Taccani Hydroelectric Power Station

Few power stations were built to look as though they had always belonged to their river. The Taccani hydroelectric plant sits at the foot of the rocky promontory where the Adda makes a sharp bend at Trezzo, directly beneath the ruins of the castle that Bernabò Visconti raised here around 1370. Its architect, Gaetano Moretti, took his cue from that medieval neighbour: the building is faced in ceppo dell'Adda, the coarse, pebbly conglomerate of the river banks, and its vertical rhythm of piers and windows echoes the surviving Visconti tower above it. The result is an eclectic blend of Lombard Romanesque memories and early-twentieth-century modernism, with a central control hall flanked by long wings for the turbines, so well married to the cliff and the water that from the far bank it reads almost as part of the fortress.

The plant was the project of Cristoforo Benigno Crespi, head of the cotton-milling dynasty, who bought the promontory and the castle remains in 1894 to secure energy for his model company town downstream, Crespi d'Adda, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The concession was granted in 1903, the first stone was laid in July 1904, and the station was completed in 1906. The architecture was Moretti's, while the hydraulic and electrical engineering was the work of Adolfo Covi, Alessandro Taccani and Oreste Simonatti; it is Taccani's name the plant carries. Besides the Crespi mill, its current also helped light Milan.

More than a century later the station still generates electricity. Its original generating sets have been replaced: six turbine-alternator groups, propeller and Kaplan types, now deliver about 10.5 MW from a head of under nine metres, and a fish pass on the left bank lets fish climb past the weir. Inside, the visitor route renovated in 2019 leads through the Liberty-style hall and the turbine room, with multimedia displays explaining how the river is put to work. The plant is one of the stops of the Ecomuseo Adda di Leonardo, the open-air museum of locks, canals, mills and factories along this stretch of the river, and the towpath beside the water makes it easy to combine with the castle and with Crespi d'Adda.

Getting there

The plant stands in Trezzo sull'Adda, on the edge of the town centre below the castle; Cassano d'Adda is about 10 km away. The nearest airport is Milan Bergamo (BGY) at Orio al Serio, about 16 km to the east. The riverside path of the Adda Nord park passes the building and can be walked or cycled at any time.