After surviving the difficult period of Spanish domination, metallurgy revived vigorously under the Austrian empress Maria Theresa and later under her son Joseph II. The mining industry, however, began an irremediable decline. Through the 18th and early 19th century, incentives were provided to stimulate technological innovation and the development of more efficient smelting furnaces. At the same time, local duties were abolished and shipping routes and methods were improved. In spite of all this, metallurgy was the victim of an international depression that, by the middle of the 19th century, had forced even the strongest and most tenacious of the production centers to cease their activities.

The silk industry in the Lecco area and, more in general, throughout the Lombardy region experienced a similar rise and fall. At first it was aided by a growing international demand (just to have an idea of its importance, it should be noted that in the middle of the 19th century Lecco had 33% of all the silk mills operating in the Duchy of Milan, 29% of the spinning plants and 58% of the yarn twisting plants), though later it was beset by problems that had a heavy influence on its development and consolidation (mulberry parassites, foreign competition).ssiti dei gelsi, concorrenza estera).

The history of the iron and silk industry can help us understand how metallurgy came to develop in the Lecco zone, partly because of the dynamics connected with the workforce and partly because of certain choices that turned out to be winners in the most difficult stages of the depression.

From the early years of the 19th century, the metallurgical industry of the Lecco zone, largely located in the so-called "Valley" area (a group of towns north of Lecco joined by the Gerenzone river and its artificial tributary, the Fiumicella), began to take on the structure of a "system-area", capable of adapting with greater flexibility and dynamism to the rapid and often dramatic changes in the historical and political position of Italy..

"A foundry, fifty forges with drop hammer, sixty rollers or drawbenches and many other small forges without hammer, and workshops where the metal is worked to produce any type of small hardware ilike polished chains, nails, etc.": this is the brief picture handed down to us by the vice-prefect Tamassia on the conditions in which, at the beginning of the 19th century, the main economic activities of the Lecco area were operating. It is a positive picture and continued to prosper in the years thereafter.

The basic element of the production system were the large forges for the production of ingots; these were then reduced in the small forges to round, square or flat rods, or hammered into utensils of every kind or more voluminous types of equipment. Then their were workshops specialized in the production of nails, locks, fixtures, buckles, bits, chains, etc.

But the product for which the Lecco mills were most famed was iron wire, made in the wire mills: in 1850 they were turning out as many as 11 million kilos of wire, a volume that made the Lecco zone a unique production center in the Kingdom of Italy.

A second element characterising the production system of Lecco was the large number of mills concentrated in the area, due above all to the generous availability of hydraulic energy provided by the Gerenzone river. At the time of Italian unification, there were as many as 153 mills, almost all concentrated in the "Valley" zone.

Lecco's industry underwent extensive expansion around 1870, reaching its peak in the three-year period from 1871-73; this progress came about essentially as a result of the specialization and rationalization of the system enacted by the leading producers, that was decisive in terms of its future development.