THE FABRIC OF TIME
riving through Biella, the northern Italian province famous for its woollen milling industry, provokes a feeling somewhere between romantic nostalgia and sadness. About a 90-minute drive north-west of Milan, the city remains Italy’s woollen milling epicentre, if not the world’s — a title that has been unchallenged for more than 300 years. Nestled in the lower slopes of the Piedmont Alps, the textile industry is the region’s biggest, in large part due to the water that channels down from the snow-crested peaks and into the River Cervo, the principal tributary of the Sesia River. The Biellese are quick to point out that here flows the purest, softest water in the world, virtually devoid of calcium and magnesium ions and thus perfect for the production and finishing of wool. But all along the banks of the river lie the slain concrete leviathans of this industry, crumbling former , windows long blown out, abandoned relics of more prosperous times. In 2008, with the global financial crisis in full swing and Italy burdened by an enormous debt to GDP ratio, with some of the oldest banking institutions
