The Villa Litta Modignani is a 17th-century rural palace and park located on Via Taccioli in the north suburbs of

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

, in the

Province of Milan The Province of Milan ( it, Provincia di Milano) was a province in the Lombardy region, Italy. Its capital was the city of Milan. The area of the former province is highly urbanized, with more than 2,000 inhabitants/km2, the third highest populat ...

, Lombardy, Italy.

History

Built as a rural villa in 1687 by Pietro Paolo Corbella, secretary of the Chancellor Segreta. Corbell had been named that year Marquis of Affori. It was in this villa that Pietro married Barbara Melzi. The building's exterior is simple; but the interiors were luxuriously decorated in a rococo-style. Marianna, the granddaughter of Pietro, only daughter of Carlo Corbello, died at the age of twenty-two and the property passed to her young husband, Francesco d'Adda. He remarried Teresa, the daughter of Marquis Pompeo Litta. She in turn widowed and married the Marquis Maurizio Gherardini. After some iterations, the family died out in 1836, and the villa was acquired by the Taccioli family, merchants of Milan. After the mid-1850s under the patronage of the Count Girolamo Trivulzio and his daughter of the Princess Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso, the villa became a locus for writers and artists including

Alessandro Manzoni Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni (, , ; 7 March 1785 – 22 May 1873) was an Italian poet, novelist and philosopher. He is famous for the novel '' The Betrothed'' (orig. it, I promessi sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the maste ...

and

Francesco Hayez Francesco Hayez (; 10 February 1791 – 12 February 1882) was an Italian painter. He is considered one of the leading artists of Romanticism in mid-19th-century Milan, and is renowned for his grand historical paintings, political allegories, and ...

. In 1905, the villa became property of a Litta-Modignani, who had married a grandson of Luigi Taccioli. The property was acquired by the province and in 1927, by the comune of Milan. The stairwell opens to the right of the access atrium, and had a fresco depicting the ''Life of Diana'' painted by Giuseppe Nuvolone. The Salons also have landscapes by Rosa da Tivoli and a large ball-room with high wooden ceilings and quadrature. In the 1850s, the formal gardens were recast as the looser "English Garden" by the Count Ercole Silva. The gardens were restored after 1958 by Egizio Nichelli. They are presently a public park. The villa is closed to visitors. While it retains some of the frescoes, it has lost nearly all the movable artworks, which once included a ''Madonna and Child'' by

Bernardino Luini Bernardino Luini (c. 1480/82 – June 1532) was a north Italian painter from Leonardo's circle during the High Renaissance. Both Luini and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio were said to have worked with Leonardo directly; he was described as having ...

.Lombardia Beni Culturali

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Litta Modignani Villas in Lombardy Gardens in Milan Buildings and structures in Milan 1687 establishments in Italy Tourist attractions in Milan