Coazzano

The village of Coazzano sits quietly in the Lombardy plain. It is a peaceful place, almost hidden. You wouldn’t know it was once independent. You’d think, if you looked, that it only existed as a tiny town in a peaceful valley. But Coazzano was once its own little kingdom, with its own stories and battles to tell. Coazzano, like many villages in this area, was once quite a bit larger than it is today. It was a small community in the Milanese. Like a little piece of forgotten history, it is a place where time seems to stand still. But its past is still tangible.
The village sits north of Vernate, where most of the action was in the past. Coazzano was a town in its own right. It was not a small part of a large place. It existed on its own. But the days of Coazzano’s independence were numbered. For centuries, its history was written in the bricks and mortar of many buildings in the village. One of them was its castle. It was called the Castello di Coazzano. This was the castle that was in charge of protecting the surrounding area. This castle was once the embodiment of this village. But its days as the protector were over.
The Castello di Coazzano stood for centuries, guarding the village and the nearby town. It was built in the fourteenth century and was a symbol of strength. But the times changed. The castle’s days as a protector were over. The battlements and the towers that were once fortified are slowly collapsing. For decades, the castle was owned by a number of different people. It was passed from hand to hand. But in 2008, the castle fell silent.
There are people who will tell you the castle caught fire. They will claim the fire damaged 200 square meters of the castle’s roof. But whisper it in a dark corner in Milan, and you’ll soon be told a different story. The whispers will tell that the fire was set on purpose. They’ll tell you that the fire was meant to erase the past.
Now, the castle sits broken and empty. There is no more castle in the village. But it’s still there. Even if it is just a shadow of its former self, the Castello di Coazzano, is there, as a symbol of Coazzano’s past, reminding everyone that the past never truly goes away.