The secret garden of Porta Romana

Bises From a historical and architectural point of view, if we think about it, Milan is a stage set almost hermetically sealed by large solid wood doors, framed in turn by stone slabs and marble details. We know that the serious eighteenth-century buildings that have made this city elegant and discreet hide unlikely secret beauties, you can spy them in the evening when chandeliers are turned on and you can glimpse frescoes and grisailles, or when in the morning the concierge services are active and colonnades and loggias, statues and gardens appear. In the era of counts and marquises, these buildings with hectares of lawns and groves followed the perfection of the "telescope", that is, that perspective that guided the eye to open the view from the door to the large park that seemed infinite without a vanishing point.

And it is precisely the “telescope” of the famous Arcadia Garden that has been at the center of a dispute, we are in Corso di Porta Romana 76. Originally the historic Palazzo Pertusati stood here, a setting for balls, receptions and a meeting place for the literary figures who were part of the Arcadia Academy founded in 1704. Its garden reached as far as Piazza Cardinal Ferrari, although at the beginning of the twentieth century a lot was sold by the family and the Casa della Meridiana by the architect Giuseppe de Finetti was built. During the bombings of 1943, Palazzo Pertusati was irreparably damaged, the main floor and the ancient library were lost, and all that remained was a gutted building of its memory. Thus, in the early post-war years, amidst opposition and economic interests, it was demolished with the promise of saving the Arcadia Garden, which was incorporated into a curtain of modern buildings. Among these is the condominium designed by an archistar of the time, Giulio Minoletti , who designed an eight-story building with the idea of ​​recreating overlapping villas with large balconies overlooking this magnificent and secret green lung of the city.