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Maggiolina District
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Show an other treasure of art and history in Milan:
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 Mostly represented styles: Renaissance - Art - decò - Other
The Maggiolina is a semi-central area of Milan located north-north-east of the city center. It is not a real neighborhood, but a very heterogeneous irregularly shaped area that takes its name from that of a farmhouse once located in that area and characterized by the presence of various interesting buildings very different both in style and by age of construction.
The Maggiolina includes various sub-areas more homogeneous within them, plus some buildings to be considered separately.
- Villa Mirabello (Fig. 9, 10): It is undoubtedly the building of greatest historical and artistic importance in the district, as it is a real Renaissance villa, originally located in the countryside and now included in the city fabric due to the strong expansion of Milan. It represents one of the most interesting examples as regards the typology of the fifteenth-century suburban villa-farmhouse, and is among the best preserved buildings in the area close to the urban center of Milan together with the Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, both on the northern route of Milan and located a short distance from each other, and the Cascina Bolla in the San Siro area.
Villa Mirabello in more detail
- Church of the Saints Carlo and Vitale at the Abbadesse: It is a small church built between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Inside it preserves some frescoes by Pietro Maggi. Church of the Saints Carlo e Vitale at the Abbadesse more in detail
- Maggiolina in strict sense: Originally, the term Maggiolina only referred to an area straddling Piazza Carbonari along the north-south axis and occupied by Art Nouveau villas (although some villas in the complex are from a short time later and already in art decò style, see for example Fig. 6 and 7. They were built in the 1920s ij place of a farmhouse called Maggiolina. After a century, these villas have largely been preserved very well and in some streets it really seems to go back in time. In particular, the private street Gasparo da Salò has even preserved a pavement made of river pebbles!
- Rodolfo Carabelli Quarter (Fig. 6): Known also as Mirabello Village, it is located directly north from Carbonari square, on the northeast border of the proper Maggiolina.It is not a real quarter, as it only occupies one block, but the stylistic uniformity makes it easily recognizable. It was built in 1939 by the Istituto Fascista Autonomo Case Popolari and consists of small three-storey buildings, made of pale pink painted concrete in perfect rationalist style, each with its small garden. Even today they look very proportionate and modern.
- Journalists' village (Fig. 1, 2, 3, 8): It represents the largest subpart of the quarter. It owes its name to the fact that it was built at the beginning of the twentieth century by a cooperative of publishers, writers and journalists who were looking for a new area of expansion for the middle class. It is a sort of garden city in which each residential building, villa or small apartment building is different from the other. The journalists' village is a purely residential area where shops, bars and restaurants are almost absent. On the other hand, there are various examples of experimental architecture, such as Villa Figini, the igloo houses and, once, even the mushroom houses (see below).
- Various art nouveau and art decò buildings: Interesting Art Nouveau buildings of various sizes are present throughout the district, even outside the Maggiolina in strict sense. Two beautiful liberty/art decò villas overlook, for example, piazzale Salvatore Farina, while in viale Arbe 51 there is a four-storey building characterized by beautiful liberty-era decorations.
Almost exactly in front of it, at 53, there is a brick building in liberty / eclectic style.
- Igloo houses (Larger image): They are in Lepanto street and were designed by the engineer Mario Cavallè, who built them immediately after the Second World War. Each igloo house occupies about 50sqm plus the garden and is divided on two levels: ground floor and basement. Of the twelve initially built, today eight survive, slightly reworked over the years. Two-storey mushroom houses were also built in the same period and in the same area, but unfortunately they were demolished in the 1960s.
- Villa Figini (Fig. 1): It is located in via Ettore Perrone di San Martino 8 and was built in 1934 by the architect Luigi Figini to live there himself. The project was conceived in accordance with rationalist dictates. The building consists of a parallelepiped resting on twelve reinforced concrete pillars and reachable by a staircase. The plant is elongated rectangular, with the long side placed at approx. 70 ° with respect to the equator, so as to offer the sun the shorter side in summer during the hottest hours. Since the walls are not load-bearing, the windows develop continuously along the sides, so as to ensure greater internal lighting. The upper cover acts as a terrace.
The structure of the building is difficult to appreciate today, as the trees in the garden have grown so much over the decades that they almost hide it from view.
- Luigi Caccia Dominioni's Palace in Piazza Carbonari 2: It is a 7-storey residential building, with a simple rectangular plan but with an asymmetrical and irregular shape on the two longer sides. The position and irregular shape of the windows, the arrangement of which is dictated solely by their function of guaranteeing the lighting of the interiors and not by compositional criteria, contrasts with the uniformity of the external surfaces, completely covered with dark brown clinker. When the building was built it was located in the extreme periphery and appeared as a reference point, in an area with few and small buildings.
If you are interested in a guided tour of this monument send an email!
Categories: Modern Architecture
milano quartiere maggiolina |
Further pictures of the Maggiolina District in the section Photography |