Villas and palaces in Milan

Milan has always been an important centre of construction of historical villas and palaces, ranging from the Romanesque to the neo-Gothic, from Baroque to Rococo.

Contents

History

The spread of the construction of patrician villas to Milan has remote origins. From the diggings and the ritrovamenti a complex system of villas of the first imperial age carries out to you is uncovered, going back to the 1st century AD approximately.

After the passage of Barbarian and the periods oxen of the Middle Ages, Milan before found again one new dimension of refined court and good noble taste to the court of the Visconti and of Sforza then. For all the 15th and the 16th centuries, in fact the pleasure is found again to construct of the residences for the noble premises, that they love to be able itself to guarantee one dwelling in city that manifest their power and their influence in the transactions of the Ducato. Of these complexes, solos little examples can be admired still today: a small jewel is constituted from the ducali apartments of Castello Sforzesco, beyond to other private villas like House Missaglia (today demolished), Borromeo House, Pallavicini House. For these constructions, according to the taste of the age, Lombardic, but also venetian, Ligurian, Piedmontese and Tuscan artists carried them out.

The successive Spanish domination little refrained spensierati enthusiasms that had been learnt during the humanism, favoring however (seppur in minimal part) a sure development of private architecture and increasing it with the demolition of buildings of previous ages.

The century that but more than every other saw the construction of the “villas of delight” was the 18th century. When the concept of villa for the summery stay was diffused, Milan copied the palatial styles of Rome, Venice, Turin, Bologna and Naples.

The industrial evolution favored one new age of increase and widening of the architectonic beauties of the city in 19th century with the attention of the Habsburgs, that they tried to give again to Milan one new dimension, also system, inasmuch as the second city of the Empire was hour after Vienna.

The 20th century was the last great parenthesis of the delight villas: with the income of Milan in the Kingdom of Italy, it had become an industrial centre of fundamental importance for the new economy and above all it had become one of the nodal points of exchange with Europe. To Milan the bourgeois, new the noble ones of the second industrial revolution began to build new buildings and homes in the city.

A list of palaces

Roman

13th century

14th century

15th century

16th century

17th century

18th century

19th century

20th century

Sources