The last inhabitant of Villa Omodei: "The large vegetable garden and the smell of bread. As a child, the garden was my kingdom"

On January 25, 1842, Carolina Carones Zucchi died childless, leaving the remaining lands and Palazzo Omodei to her first grandson, the engineer Giovanni Domenico Carones. He sold the plots to pay the inheritance taxes and donated others to the Municipality of Cusano for the widening of some streets, including Corso Matteotti. Thus began the story of the Carones family , owners of the noble building from the 1600s, symbol of the city. Adele "Dede" Maria Carones was the last tenant of that unusual building, inhabited by a varied humanity and already in ruins at the time. A child among evacuees, coffered ceilings and frescoes, covered with sheets by grandfather Carlo to save them. It was June 25, 1937 when the great financier of the Carones family, great-grandfather Giovanni Domenico, died, leaving behind a wife and 7 children. In a note to the will he assigns what was left of the lands of Cusano, Cinisello, Paderno and Palazzo Omodei to his grandchildren Giuseppe, Giancarlo, Luisa and Maria Pia and only the usufruct to his son Carlo. "My great-grandfather was never interested because he already owned a farm and a large palace in Corbetta, designed by the architect Francesco Croce, the one with the spire of the Madonnina del Duomo. The palace was abandoned and for a certain period rented to the Mombello institute, occupied by some patients until 1910 - says Dede -. However, I will always thank my great-aunt Carolina for having left it to him: without her my father would not have had two rooms to start his business. Without her, I, my brothers and my cousins ​​would not have been able to enjoy a few rooms with bathrooms and a splendid garden to spend the summers carefree". It is Adele's father who becomes the administrator of his great-grandfather's inheritance. "Dad worked as a draftsman in a large company, he was a surveyor. Then he was left without a job, he already had a family. Mom was an orphan and after graduating she started teaching literature. Dad opened his own company, Carones Arredamenti, starting from a carpentry shop in the villa and it was his fortune. He was so generous that he would give furniture to everyone. Then Mom gave up teaching and started working as the company's accountant. They also worked with Bruno Munari". Grandfather Carlo, usufructuary, continued to rent the rooms of the building and the neighboring buildings at a low price. "He had sold all the land and the only income he received was the rent from Cusano. We had a kitchen, a living room where my sister and I lived and then another room where the brothers lived. In times of difficulty, we spent our holidays here. Other people lived in the rest of the building. We children saw the squat toilet on the stairs, the bathroom in the basin, the curtains that separated the rooms. The garden was our kingdom. We had two beehives. Then there was the little hill where mum had sown carrots and a mini vegetable garden". Until 1964 the Carones spent June and July in Cusano. "Next to it was the large vegetable garden of Dante, the village greengrocer, who had rented the plot of land from his grandfather," recalls his older sister Adriana. "In the garden there was a cedar of Lebanon that three people had to hug, it was so big, and a ginkgo biloba that was rare at the time. We learned to ride a bike there. There was a very tall fig tree in the yard: to pick the fruit we used a can attached to the pole. The old little church overlooked the Seveso and we went to see the color of the water as if it were a spectacle of nature." And then the ice cream man Colombo who passed by with his cart, Aliprandi who carried ice on his bike and the baker "where in the morning we went to buy michette with our money. I have never smelled that smell of freshly baked bread again."

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