Villa Borromeo Arese in Cesano Maderno

Historycal profile
The Borromeo Arese Villa is placed in Cesano Maderno, a town in the province of Milan; its history appears very complicated because of historiographical documents concernong the period of construction and the following changes. The Palace was built on the ruines of an antique thirteenth-century castle, the real existence of which is confirmed by the traces found in the south area of the present contstruction and by some basement. The orientation of the complex was thought next to the aim to cut the feudo longitudinally therefore to dominate it completely. The beginning of the works of building dated back to the XVII the century probably around 1626 for the will of Giulio Arese. The palace would have been completed in 1652.
Year by year the biographical vicissitudes of the Areses kept on affecting the evolution of this country seat; besides it is important to remember that in the whole seventeenth-century the palace became the centre of great political ceremonies and in the eighteenth-century thanks to its importance and magnificence it allowed a sumptuosus political active social life.
Among the eminent guests of the palace the dukes of Parma, the Saxon prince and numerous Austrian dignitaries can be mentioned.
Nowadays the town house is the best preserved example of the aristocratic suburban seventeenth-century settlement in Lombardy.
In fact it has maintained the late seventeenth-century aspect without undergoing considerable transformations subsequently.
Earl Renato had some modifications done to the pictorial decorations in many parts of the palace in wonderfull late baroque style, adding stuccoed vaults about the middle of the eighteenth-century.
Moreover under its impulse and still before for earl Carlo’s will the work of excavation of the “irrigation channel Borromeo”were realised, in order to improve the system of irrigation of the garden and the flour mill, the tower of the palace was elevated, the fountain was completed and the garden was widened and beautified.
After the last additions date back to the end of the nineteenth-century the building declined progressively; the precarious conditions of the palace became worse and worse during the second world war because of the occupancy of the rooms by evacuees or as warehouse.
Rearranged in 1956 the palace underwent a downward phase. Thanks to a recent intervention, the external exedra and the interiors have been restored.

Architectonic description

Facade
We can observe the simple, bare and austere structure of the facade, which plays on the volumes; it is characterized by a main concave part placed side by side to two lateral parts, in one of which there is an octagonal plant tower that apart from being decorative object it was also used for astronomical studies; the severity of the facade can be found again in the quadrangular courtyard; the two sides of which diposed in axis with the entrance are characterized by sober decorative elements, which consist in stone pillars in stone on which ashlar arches rest themselves and over the center of these sides there are the sopralzo of the central hall and the overhead loggia, the only one example in Lombardy, created in order to have the seen on the courtyard and the park, the loggia divided the private flat of Bartolomeo III from the one of his wife Lucrezia Omodei. In the porch below the loggia there are some elaborated decorations like the niches in which we can find roman emperors’ busts and shaped sandstone frames of the doors and the windows.

First floor
The first floor has a series of representation rooms characterized by some mitologiacal frescoes on the vaulted ceilings, while the walls are not frescoed;
One of the most important room is the?Sala of ritratti, whose vaulted ceilings are decorated in rococo style this space is also called for the fresco executed by Montalto.

Important to notice it is also the then called for the presence on the walls of pictures by Pitocchetto; the room is frescoed by Giuseppe Nuvolone with
An other very important room is the whose barrel vaults are decorated in rococo style and where is important to notice the central medallion divided in three parts from one golden stucco frame with three paintings by Ercole Procaccini il Giovane.
A particularitity of the palace is represented by the “Ninfeo” that consists in two rooms decorated with a black and white pebble mosaic, with stuccoes and frescoes, and whose function was to be a place of conversation for Bartolomeo III with his more intimate friends.

Second Floor
the most important hall is the where took partyes, it is decorated in a gorgeus way, with a sumptuos architecture; the walls are completely frescoed with topics that refer to the monarchic, republican and imperial Rome; in fact there are eight statues painted that represent some personages from an acient Rome and over them episodes of their heroic deeds are represented; on the center of the north and south walls there are two arches of triumph frescoed in which are inserted frescoes by Ercole Procaccini il Giovane and by Montalto.
One of the most refined and elegant hall it is the decorated by false architecture and columns;
A very particular room is the where naturalistic scenes are represented all over the wall.
- the represents one of the most evocative and spectacular places, in which there are monocrome statue in imitation of the bronze that personify the liberal arts, forehead to which there are important personages refearing to them; important to notice it is also the wooden ceiling divided in nine panels that are frescoed.
Important to remember is the loggia that have a vaulted ceiling where there are represented six cupids that support the symbols of the family, that are the black crown, the eagle and the black wings .

In the palace there are also places dedicated to the prayer like the private oratory dedicated to Saint Peter Martore and the pubblic chapel, ; the chapel is preceded by a vestibule which openes to the chapel whose plant is given from a octagonal base space covered by once of elliptic base and from a presbiterio placed side by side to two rectanguler spaces. The structure of the chapel is given from two levels for the presence of awoman’s gallery, was reserved to the members of the family; this space presents a vestibule decorated with false architectures and episodes of the Old Testament;

In 1538 the founder of the Arese family, Bartolomeo, bought half of the feud of Seveso. In 1611 these territories were divided among his grandsons: Giulio, Marco Maria and Antonio Arese; each of them obtained a sixth of the area.
Than these properties were handed down from Giulio to his son Bartolomeo and Earl Benedetto. According to the first hypothesis the construction of the Villa seems to have been begun in 1626 thanks to Giulio’s will; instead in accordance with other sources the beginning of the opera dates back in 1654. In 1665 Giulio, the only heir of Bartolomeo Arese (1610-1674) and Lucrezia Omodei, died.
In 1674 after the death of Bartolomeo, the father, his two daughters, Giulia and Margherita managed to obtain the faculty of succession in 1675 after a long dispute with the “Regia Camera”.
Only in may 1676, the document was ratified against payment. Through earl Bartolomeo’s testamentary will the feudal area and the palace passed on to the earlness Giulia and her husband Ranato, for whose wedding the building was completed in 1652.
In 1701 Carlo Borromeo Arese succeeded his mother Giulia and he nearly managed to coplete the palace definitively with his father Renato; especially they took care of the park and they created the menagerie.
Benedetto succeeded his father Carlo and Renato, Benedetto’s son succeeded his father. Renato became co-owner of his father in July 1768.
Giberto Borromeo Arese, his father Renato’s successor, presented the request for the confirmation of the ancient titles and of the family feuds to the “Royal Heraldic Committee” in 1815; the ownership was notified to him by the “Sovrana Patente” in May 1817.
In 1848 earl Giberto participated in the provisional governament during the revolutionary “Five Days” of Milan.
After that he had to go into exile with all his family. In that period the palace was occupied by the Austrian army.
In 1858 the feud still appeared as one of earl Giberto’s properties, in spite of the fact that he had been dead for some years.
This irregularity was solved by the “Luogotenenza” for Lombardy, requiring the evidence of feud ownership to earl Vitaliano Borromeo, Giberto’s son.
In the second half of nineteenth-century the feud of palace remained Vitaliano Borromeo’s holdings, who, however, living in Torino, designated doctor gaetano stringelli as a proxy based on trust. At the beginning of the last century, the palace was one of Vitaliano Borromeo’s grandson’s ownership.
In the second half of the twentyth-century the palace handed down to the Town Hall.

The Park

The park of the Borromeo Arese Palace is extended for about 90000 square meters, 60000 of which of lawn, 3500 of alley and as many of Italian garden. There are moreover more than thousand trees between which a hundred are multicentennial

ITALIAN GARDEN
It is a typology of garden named in this way because it seems to be work of L. B. Alberti, who he himself would have planned in the Renaissance. Between the XV and XVIII century, the Italian garden develops and becomes popular in the whole Europe.
In the 1500's it had a sloped-down structure able to establish one symbiosis between natural and architectonic elements, while in the 1600's, following the new baroque style, change aesthetically transforming itself in a game of more or little strong contrasts and artificial scenography.
Architects, sculptors and painters of great reputation arrange the plants alternating water games and marble statue in order to create architectonic works with perspective geometric vision.
All these elements are arranged following the rules of a geometric design in order to obtain a specular and regular vision As an example often they are inserted high hedges of boxwood modelled with animal, floral and geometric shapes ; the alley and the little alley in gravel are purposely intersected at regular intervals.
Finally also the flower-beds, that delimit the space reserved to the various plants, are symmetrically broadsides and re-united according to homogenous schemes.
The Italian garden join in the French one created by the architect A. Le Notre, in which the most rigid Italian perspective tends to fade to the infinity in a game of river basins and ornamental flower-beds. Both are essentially formal garden, ordered regular in which the is important the compositive schematism.

Modern Use Of “Palazzo Borromeo Arese”

Nowday the palace has a great culture value. The very good management done by the town hall has permitted to point out structures and spaces. Besides beeing a naturale area for Cesano city thanks to his luxuriant green park, Palazzo Borromeo is the periodic centre of many art exhibitions and shows.
Thanks to the project and the care of two hight cultured personalities has Massimo Cacciari and Don Luigi Verzè, a big part of the rooms, repaired and utilizable, are given for the didactive activites of the San Raffaele’s Philosophical Course,a university situated in Milan.
The activities of the university projected in May 2002 started with regoular lessons in the accademic year 2002-2003. The university in fact had stipulated a contract with the Cesano Maderno town hall thanks to which it has been possible to find an appropiated seat for the mother of all the sciences.
The university and the town hall, morover are planning , with the best modalities , all the instruments to answer at the necessities of the students with services, reserved spaces, transport and restorations.
Finally we have to point out the placement of the pubblic hall situated in the architettonical “ Salone d’ Onore e della Giustizia .
So the Palazzo Borromeo Arese is more and more becaming a cultural, educative, informative centre which permits to exploite the structure ad give it a modern use.