Along the Imperial Regio Stradone

Precotto owes its development to the monks of the Order of the Humiliati, who built a factory for weaving gold and silver threads in the Middle Ages. The main road, today via Cislaghi, was surrounded by expanses of farmland. Fields and farmsteads, as well as furnaces, characterised the area until the construction of the Imperial Regio Stradone (today Viale Monza), inaugurated in 1838, which favoured the localisation of manufacturing and the progressive urbanisation along the axis to Milan.

Underlining the importance of the religious element in Precotto’s history is the presence of the oratory of Santa Maria Maddalena, built in the 16th century inside the old cemetery, now occupied by a park. The interior features a single nave and pictorial cycles from the 16th century, including the Glory of St. Mary Magdalene. The presbytery contains frescoes depicting the Saint’s penance and a God the Father, attributed to the Bramante school.

The church of San Michele Arcangelo on viale Monza, built between 1865 and 1866 incorporating the remains of the old parish church, houses numerous paintings by Luigi Morgari, the bronze pulpit fallof the Deposition of Christ by Francesco Barzaghi, the 1880 pipe organ reassembled in 1911 by Edoardo Rossi and several votive chapels with decorations.