City Plans Restoration of Historic Horse Chestnuts and Viale Roma
Restoring new life to the city’s main entrance avenue. This is the goal of the new Centre-Left Town Council that took office at the Municipality just a few weeks ago. The topic was included in the work program of the Administration presented during the first meeting, the one marking the City Council’s inauguration. “This,” explains Mayor Morando Perini, “is how it is – the ‘vialone,’ as it’s called by the residents of Lonate. Once, it served as the summer promenade. But the large tree-lined boulevard, bordered by centuries-old horse chestnuts, has been neglected, and over the decades, the situation has continually worsened.
The sidewalks are riddled with holes, and the entire boulevard needs renovations. We intend to act by preparing a comprehensive project for renovation and beautification. We also plan to address the horse chestnuts bordering the avenue by removing stumps of cut trees, removing dead ones, and replacing them. The goal is to save the trees as well. We will evaluate, with the support of experts, whether to fill the gaps with new horse chestnuts or to consider other species. The trees will remain.”
Valuation and Preservation Initiatives for Horse Chestnuts
“This is our objective,” adds Public Works Councillor Davide Baccinelli. “We want to beautify and restore viale Roma. The project, it’s important to clarify, does not yet exist. We will move quickly.” After many years of discussions and debates about the future of the centuries-old horse chestnuts lining the boulevard, a recovery and enhancement project is finally underway.
Specifically, the planned beautification works will also help maintain the health of the horse chestnuts. These trees are true vegetative patriarchs. Photos from the early 20th century already show them as dense and towering, so even without dendrochronological investigations, some believe they date back to the time of the Battle of San Martino and Solferino.
Nearly 150-year-old horse chestnuts that once cast shadows over carriages and diligences, then over the earliest automobiles and, later, over the intense traffic that until a few years ago heavily affected the state road 11. Now, with the opening of the bypass, much of the traffic flows away. Thus, the horse chestnuts, suffocated by smog and also by age, will have another chance.
Indeed, the hypothesis of cutting down the trees, which had been considered a few years ago by ANAS (when the road was a state highway), due to the danger of falling branches on passing cars, seems to have been averted. At that time, the ANAS proposal sparked a wide debate among local administrators and residents.
Many voices rose in defense of the centuries-old horse chestnuts, believed to be salvageable through targeted pruning, care, and branch reinforcement with tension cables. Amid requests and expert evaluations, a “drastic” pruning was carried out. The trees passed the test. The road is now municipal and no longer under ANAS’s jurisdiction.
Ennio Moruzzi