The hidden modernity
A piano in a cabinet, a shower behind carved wood.
Melancholia~itwiki — CC BY-SA 4.0 · BelPatty86 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · BelPatty86 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · BelPatty86 — CC BY-SA 4.0
The house of two brothers who lived as if in the sixteenth century: Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi built their home in the Montenapoleone quarter in the 1880s and furnished it entirely with genuine Renaissance pieces they bought, alongside new pieces made deliberately in sixteenth-century style so that the two could not be told apart. The result is a real dwelling — they lived here with their families — that looks like a Renaissance palace: a library of manuscripts, an armoury, paintings by Giovanni Bellini and Giambattista Moroni, carved beds, and a kitchen and bathroom disguised behind wooden fronts to hide their modernity — the detail visitors love: a piano concealed in a cabinet, a shower behind a carved door. It remained in the family until 1974 and became a museum in 1994 exactly as it stood. Two minutes from Via Montenapoleone, it is among Milan's quietest and least crowded museums.
A piano in a cabinet, a shower behind carved wood.
Saint Justina in the bedroom.
Via Gesù 5, Milan
Palazzo MorandoAn eighteenth-century palace in the heart of Milan's fashion district, holding a2 minutes walk4.4
The Arches of the Old Porta NuovaA medieval gate in central Milan, built in 1171 as part of the city wall, and on3 minutes walk4.2
Poldi Pezzoli MuseumThe Poldi Pezzoli is a collector's house become museum — the model later famous 4 minutes walk4.6
The Manzoni HouseThe house where the writer Alessandro Manzoni lived for about sixty years until 4 minutes walk4.4
Galleria d'Arte Moderna (GAM), MilanMilan has a public garden that adults are not allowed to enter unless a child br6 minutes walk4.4In idea yes: both are nineteenth-century collectors' houses turned museums, five minutes' walk apart — and both fit one afternoon for anyone who likes the genre.