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Art Noveau in the Porta Venezia quarter
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 Mostly represented styles: Art - Nouveau
The art nouveau buildings in Milan are really many, since the liberty period overlapped with a period of great expansion of the city and of large influx of people who came to live in Milan.
They are therefore not concentrated in one single area, but distributed in many parts of the city. Nevertheless there are some quarters that are particularly "rich" of art nouveau. One of them is the one of Porta Venezia, in particular the area north east of it.
Compared to the Zone between corso Venezia and Mozart street it contains are less opulent and monumental buildings, because they were built for less rich customers.
They are therefore often, in particular in the parts more distant from the center, substantially normal houses, although still of good level, in which the liberty decoration appears as an additional element, whose presence serves to make them more valuable and fashionable.
Among the various buildings in the area, it is worth mentioning:
- Hotel Diana Majestic (Pic. 1), Mascagni street at the corner with Manfredini street: It was built in 1907 and designed by Alberto Manfredini and inaugurated in 1908. It took the place of the preexisting bathrooms Diana, one of the first public and luxury swimmingpools in Italy.
Because of an terrorist outrage in 1921, the interior is no longer the original one, contrary to the exterior, which has preserved the grandiose taste, the curved solution for the corner area and the roof structure, characterized by elaborate skylights and curved surfaces in a distinctly French style.
The hotel building lost the pool, replaced by a garden.
The theater, which was initially present in the hotel, was transformed in 2001 into a location for events and fashion shows for Gucci.
From 1907 to 1946 the hotel also contained a space for the game of pelota.
In 1914 the hotel hosted the first edition of EICMA.
- House Galimberti (Pic. 2-4 and larger picture), Malpighi street 3 corner with Sirtori street: House Galimberti is one of the most important art nouveau buildings in Milan.
It was built between 1903 and 1905 following the project of architect Giovanni Battista Bossi on behalf of the Galimberti brothers. Also the decorations were designed by Bossi.
The building comprehends two wings not at a right angle. The corner position is underlined by the prominent cornice. On the ground floor there are shops, whereas the upper floors are occupied by private apartments.
The building structure is not in itself complex, although we note that the balconies are arranged in an irregular manner. Their structure, also, is not homogeneous: in the first floor the balustrades are entirely of concrete, in the second floor the corners are of cements while the central part is of wrought iron, in the third floor, finally, the balustrades are entirely of wrought iron.
Note that the balconies on the corner, wider than the others, are connected by columns, of stone between the first and the second floor, of iron between the second and the third floor.
The decoration is concentrated in vertical bands in which also the windows and the balconies are located. The most striking element is represented by depictions of human figures and of vegetal and floral elements on glazed tiles. On the first floor shapely female figures are depicted, but also the fauns, while on the other floors there are floral motifs.
The structure of the material is such that at sunset the surfaces assume particular reflections, almost like the water of a lake.
- House Guazzoni (Pic. 5.6), Malpighi street 12: It is not far from the previous one and it is another creation of the architect Giovanni Battista Bossi, who realized it between 1904 and 1906. Also in this case the building is in a corner position and also in this case the ground floor is occupied by shops, while the upper floors are occupied by apartments.
From the point of view of the general structure House Guazzoni is even simpler than House Galimberti. What makes the difference is the rich external decoration, although in this case colors are almost completely absent.
In return, every window and every balcony is decorated with reliefs depicting heads, lads, vegetable and floral elements. Furthermore there are horizontal stripes, decorated with floral and geometric elements in relief.
Great importance have also the wrought iron balustrades of the balconies, full of curves and embellished with floral elements. As in case of House Galimberti, the balconies are distributed irregularly, with balustrades sometimes of concrete (on the first floor) sometimes of wrought iron (on the other floors), with the balconies on the first floor connected to those of the second floor through wrought iron columns characterized by a fanciful shape.
A special mention deserve the beautiful and mysterious female heads in relief on the walls just above the shop windows.
- Cinema Dumont (Fig. 7), Frisi street 2: The building was built in 1908 in Art Nouveau style. The one floor building was built specifically to house the cinema of the Galli brothers, which was one of the first buildings in Italy specially designed for this purpose. For its name however a common French surname was chosen, in order to give an exotic and avant-garde touch to the cinema. Of the original building the art nouveau facade with French floral influences remains today. The building houses now a public library.
- The other three pictures show three different shades of late Art Nouveau applied to residential building which are elegant but also aimed at a wider audience. In Figure 8, a very linear Art Nouveau, in which the decorations are characterized by more taut lines and therefore already tend to art deco.
Also the building in Figure 9 has deviated from the original liberty, but in a different direction, namely that of neo-baroque, with heavier and twisted decorations.
The building in Figure 10, finally, located in Maiocchi street 14, is characterized by the presence of new decorative elements, such as bat wings and heads not graceful any more as in the original art nouveau, but rather tending to the late imperial Roman sculpture (note the similarity of the heads present in the lower part of the building with the representations that were made in its time of Constantine the Great).
All the pictures shot during the tour of the art nouveau in the Porta Venezia quarter
If you are interested in a guided tour of this monument send an email!
Categories: Villas und palaces Modern Architecture
Porta Venezia Milano |
Further pictures of the Art Noveau in the Porta Venezia quarter in the section Photography |