Built on the ruins of the San Giorgio workers' club, this 4-star hotel in north Milan, which has joined the Best Western brand, is at the centre of a major urban restructuring project carried out at the beginning of the twentieth century: the housing complex built by Falck, a historic iron and steel company.
Guests will find much more here than simple fulfilment of their travel requirements. They will find a fascinating part of Italian history to discover and experience, just a few minutes from the bustling heart of Milan, the capital of business, fashion and sport, with its many attractions.
The Flack Village Hotel is in fact adjacent to major routes that take you from Sesto San Giovanni to the centre of Milan and the Brianza area in a very short time. It also provides various different ways of reaching the new Rho-Pero exhibition complex and both Malpensa and Linate airport.
Big hands, blue overalls, a siren marking the beginning and end of the working day and the passing of time. For thousands of workers, living in the Stalingrad of Italy, as the town was called, was an honour, something to boast about, a well-deserved reward. It was the twentieth century. Before them, other Sestesi had known and loved this small town on the outskirts of Milan. They remembered a time when spinning factories and large farmsteads represented the power of a nobility who found relaxation and good food in the countryside around the town. That was at the end of the nineteenth century.
In Sesto San Giovanni, the past echoes through the industrial buildings blackened by time and darkened by change. Many of the towns historic buildings have been converted into theatres and museums.
Today the city is striving for innovation and multinationals are finding an ideal environment here. The area is at the centre of a restructuring plan that will significantly redesign the urban environment, transforming "the city of factories" into a "factory of ideas", according to the definition given by architect Renzo Piano to this ambitious project he has undertaken.
All of these aims should be viewed as a challenge. The aim that the town of Sesto San Giovanni is trying to achieve is immortality. Its people have experienced and lived in a constantly changing environment.
From a farming village, Sesto has become a nerve centre of Italian and European industry, a state-of-the-art, metropolitan city, providing university level education and a host of different services. This is the experience presented by the "Villaggio Falck", the first example of a Fordist village in Italy, competing to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site as an example of a changing cultural environment.
The Falck Village Hotel is part of this long history.