San Pellegrino Terme is a Lombard municipality with less than 5,000 inhabitants, set in a green valley in the middle Brembana valley. Its global fame comes from its mineral water, exported to every corner of the planet, but the city is much more: Art Nouveau architecture of rare beauty, karst caves, a past as a protagonist of the European elite and a season of abandonment that has given it an almost legendary aura.
The origins: water and well-being in the eighteenth century
In 1760 Pellegrino Foppoli was the first to exploit the sulphate-alkaline-earthy waters that flowed at a constant temperature of 26 degrees. He built a toll booth with seats and tubs to allow the locals to take advantage of these beneficial waters. It was a modest, almost artisanal beginning, very far from the splendor that would arrive a century later.
In 1820, Foppoli’s partners commissioned a new Art Nouveau spa, equipped with dressing rooms, bathtubs and cutting-edge facilities from a medical and plant engineering point of view. Outside the building a fountain made water available to the inhabitants of the municipality. It was already a sign: San Pellegrino had big ambitions.
Bottled water
Cesare Mazzoni, a local lawyer, was responsible for the idea of exporting bottled water. A commercial choice that turned out to be visionary. The therapeutic properties of San Pellegrino water obtained official recognition from the Ministry of Health in 1992, but the product’s reputation had already been consolidated for decades.
In 1905 the first building dedicated to bottling was built, also in Art Nouveau style. In the following years, the Milanese Ezio Granelli proposed adding other drinks to water: orangeade and Chinotto, which later became iconic brands of Italian taste in the world. The San Pellegrino label still bears the image of the Casino with the two red stars, the historical symbol of quality Italian products intended for export.
The Grand Hotel and the golden season 
1904 was the year of the definitive turning point. The inauguration of the Grand Hotel, designed with more than 200 rooms, electricity and tennis courts, transformed San Pellegrino into a destination for the European elite. The building was connected to the Source and the Casino by a wooden bridge, today known as Ponte Principe Umberto.
Illustrious guests include Nobel Prize winners Salvatore Quasimodo and Eugenio Montale, as well as Queen Margherita of Savoy. San Pellegrino had become a “ville d’eau” in all respects: a health and holiday resort, frequented by intellectuals, aristocrats and businessmen who sought both health and worldliness.
The architects Romolo Squadrelli and Luigi Mazzocchi designed both the Grand Hôtel and the Palazzo della Fonte and the former municipal casino, now a venue for conferences and cultural events. The two buildings face each other on the slope opposite the river, connected by an equipped portico, in an architectural dialogue that still defines the visual character of the city today. The Drinks Room of the Palazzo della Fonte is decorated with Pompeian-style frescoes: a sumptuous detail that tells of the level of aesthetic ambition of the time.
The artistic and religious heritage
In the lower part of the town there is the eighteenth-century parish church of San Pellegrino. The interior is richly decorated with stucco and houses, behind the main altar, a large painting attributed to Pietro Longhi depicting the Condemnation of San Pellegrino. It is one of the most significant sacred spaces in the valley, often overlooked compared to the thermal and architectural attractions, but capable of restoring the most intimate and rooted dimension of the city.
The ghost town
San Pellegrino Terme experienced a long period of decline. From being a popular destination for holidays and treatments, the city found itself progressively emptied: many buildings closed, elite tourism moved elsewhere, and the Art Nouveau structures remained partly abandoned. That season of immobility earned it the definition of a ghost town.
Today the same buildings represent one of the most coherent and spectacular testimonies of Italian floral architecture, with the Grand Hotel and the Casino acting as the backdrop for slow and curious tourism, in search of stratified beauty. It is also worth exploring the cable car area and the new spa, built inside the former Terme-Milano hotel.
The Dream Caves
To complete the identity of the territory there is an underground dimension, literally. The Dream Caves, located in the Vetta area, form a karst complex discovered in 1931 by Ermenegildo Zanchi and accessible to the public since 2012. The guided tour lasts about half an hour and passes through environments rich in stalactites, stalagmites and limestone concretions with singular shapes.
The constant temperature and isolation from the outside world make the visit a timeless break. The caves speak of the relationship between San Pellegrino and its subsoil, a geological bond that goes alongside the one with the mineral waters on the surface. For those who arrive in the city with the intention of truly understanding it, the Dream Caves offer an unexpected and necessary point of view.
The Brembano Museum of Natural Sciences
The Brembano Museum of Natural Sciences is located inside Villa Speranza, born from the discovery of important paleontological finds from the Triassic. It is a place of research and dissemination that places San Pellegrino also on the scientific map, beyond the spa and tourist dimension. The Triassic fossils of the Brembana valley have a specific weight in Italian paleontology, and the museum is the main point of reference for those who study and tell that natural history.
San Pellegrino Terme is a city that has experienced very different seasons: the euphoria of the Belle Époque, the slowness of abandonment, the recent rediscovery. Precisely this stratification makes it an authentic place, far from the plasticized perfection of certain more celebrated tourist destinations. Every building bears the signs of time and every corner tells something specific.
