Emilio Fossati, Il Tombone de Piotello / The Tombone of Piotello

images are screenprints from the first video
in the documentation

Formerly an independent municipality, Limito currently is a district in the south of Piotello, a municipality with around 32,000 inhabitants in the Metropolitan City of Milan in the Italian region Lombardy. 

Along the southern border of the buildings in the Limito district there is a piece of land wedged between a four-lane highway and a row of houses along the Via Fabrizio de André.

For many years this area was abandoned and neglected land, used to dump waste, until in 2016 Emilio Fossati, a resident of the Limito district, decided to start renovating it. 

Fossati was an unmarried man, at that time in his early sixties and retired, and what he was about to do was at his own expense and completely selfless. 

The project would take seven years of hard work, but it resulted in a freely accessible, beautiful walking area, full of shrubs, trees and benches and also equipped with colorful decorations.

Let's take a look.

The very first image shows a sign showing the location and name of the site: Limito Localita and Il Tombonen, also known as El Tümbüm. 

A tombone is a large concrete pipe that is used to allow water from a stream or creek to flow through a dam which one wants to use to cross that stream or creek. 

 

The two images above show a stream running along the site. This stream, called Calchera stream, separates the site from the southernmost street of Piotello.

One of Fossati's major projects was deepening and repairing the walls of the stream. The walls along which the stream ran consisted of masonry stones, which Fossati renovated or supplemented with stones from old houses or farms that were demolished. 

Deepening the stream was also quite a job. Its bottom was covered with a large number of small pebbles, which he partly replaced or removed to allow a better flowing of the water.

Furthermore, the access bridge was also redesigned, and -as shown in the image above- this bridge was also provided with two decorations.

Such decorative elements have been added to more parts of the site, such as the restored walls of the stream, that were provided with paintings on various spots, or the top of such a wall that was decorated with a sculpture.

The image of Christ on the cross below is part of an ensemble of creations near a bench made by Fossati.

It is not an extensive collection of artworks, but what can be seen indicates that, in addition to restoring the site, Fossati also had an eye for adding decorative elements, which resulted in the creation of a small-scale art environment.

The site as a whole was also tackled by constructing paths, adding seating facilities, planting flowers and shrubs and the organizing and regular maintenance of trees and shrubs.

In this way, in seven years and thousands of hours of work, a neglected area was transformed into a small oasis and a small-scale art environment.

In December 2019 Fossati was honored by a Certificate of Merit from the municipality.

To conclude this post, here is the translation into English of the text on a billboard along one of the site's paths

The View of Desires

Take a look,

first look at the passage

then, close your eyes

for a moment

and express

your wish.

Good luck

Documentation

* Article (October 2023) in newspaper Prima Lamartesana

* Article (October 2023) in newspaper OHGA

* Article (January 2020) in Lista per Piotello, about the presentation of the Certificate of Merit, with various illustrations

Videos

* Video (2'07", YouTube, October 2023) by Prima la Martesana

* Video (9'27", YouTube, August 2023) by Thomas Fox

Emilio Fossati,

Il Tombone de Piotello

Entrance along the Via Fabrizio de André 

Piotello, dept Metropolitan City of Milan, region Lombardy, Italy

the site can be visited freely by the public

Google Streetview, with a variety of photos