Cardano

The largest village in Grandola ed Uniti, Cardano is the first one encountered upon entering the village. The name may derive from the Roman cardo, referring to the "hinge," the central point where the entrance gate "opens." This hamlet is among the most characteristic in all of Grandola, with peasant and other more bourgeois houses following one another, forming a labyrinth of cobbled lanes, porticoes and courtyards, all decorated with frescoes, stucco and other ornamental details.

At the entrance to the hamlet, there is a beautiful portal with a gate and two side pillars surmounted by busts: on the right, Count Pellegrino Rossi di Caprara, Louis Philippe's ambassador to Rome, and on the left Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg, a well-known Swiss pedagogue. The busts were placed by Baldassarre Galbiati, who also designed the inscriptions.

A little further on, you reach the small town square, overlooked by the beautiful Villa Bagatti Valsecchi. A late 19th-century inscription painted on a house can be read here, which reads: "O passegger who comes from afar, rest a moment at the beautiful Cardano."

This phrase testifies to the passage of many tourists, especially from northern Europe.
Among the main attractions in Cardano: the Church of Sts. Catherine, Bernard and St. Francis Xavier, dating back to 1744; the Little Chapel of the Cross; and the Chapel of the Three Kings.