Overview
After all, Cremona is nothing more than the magnificent urban face of the countryside that surrounds it, the world that has always nourished the city in many substantial aspects that are not all immediately evident. To fully understand the vitality of cultivated nature and the guidance provided by the genus Sapiens, one would need to spend weeks in a farmhouse in the Lombardy lowlands. If this is not possible, however, it is worth at least visiting the farmstead museum on the outskirts of town, just to the north.
The Cambonino Vecchio is in fact a 19th-century farmhouse that has been used as an example for almost half a century through reconstructions of traditional daily life and work. The barn and pigsties are empty, but the rooms remain as they were a few decades ago, the furniture is the furniture of the period, the objects and tools are real, and the ploughs, farm carts and hoes remain under the porch.
Unless you have come to Cremona by car, the route from the historic centre is not a quick one. It also takes more or less three-quarters of an hour through modern neighbourhoods with warehouses, traffic roundabouts and suburban shopping centres: after all, it really was once the countryside here.
