Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
they built their home as a living museum of the Quattrocento. Decorated after the style of
the ducal palaces in Mantua, the apartments are full of Renaissance furnishings, ceiling
friezes, tapestries and paintings. Even the period stone bath was discreetly retrofitted for
running water, a modernisation of their own era.
Villa Necchi Campiglio
HOUSE MUSEUM
( 02 763 40 121;
www.casemuseo.it
; Via Mozart 14; adult/child €8/4; 10am-6pm Wed-Sun; San Babila)
Set in a beautiful garden with tall magnolia trees, this villa is a symbol of Milan's modern-
ist imaginings in the early 1930s. Designed by Rationalist architect Piero Portaluppi for
Pavian heiresses Nedda and Gigina Necchi, the house blends art deco and rationalist
styles symbolising an outlook that was astoundingly modern while at the same time
anchored in a world that was fast slipping away.
Quotidian details - Bauhaus-influenced monograms on hair brushes, silk evening
frocks hanging at the ready - are as enthralling as the sleek architectural lines and big
ticket artworks by Morandi and de Chirico.
Giardini Pubblici
( 6.30am-sunset; Palestro)
A life story unfolds as you follow pebble paths past bumper
cars and a carousel, onward past a game of kick to kick, kissing teens, a beer kiosk, baby
prams, jogging paths and shady benches. Jump in, or just stop and smell the roses. For
02 8846 3337; Corso Venezia 55; adult/conc €3/1.50; 9am-5.30pm Tue-Sun; Palestro)
beckons fam-
ilies; the grand neo-Romanesque building houses dinosaurs, fossils and the largest geo-
logy collection in Europe.
GARDEN
Casa Museo Boschi-di Stefano
HOUSE MUSEUM
( 02 2024 0568;
www.fondazioneboschidistefano.it
; Via Giorgio Jan 15; 2-6pm Tue-Sun Sep-Jul, daily Aug;
Lima)
Milan's most eccentric museum of 20th-century Italian painting is
crowded salon-style in a purpose-built, 1930s apartment that still has the appearance of
the haute-bourgeois home it once was. It's a heady art hit with Boccioni's dynamic brush-
strokes propelling painting towards Futurism, the nostalgically metaphysical Campigli
