HISTORICAL ASPECT

The villa Tittoni Traversi Cusani is located in Desio, a small town near Milan: it has a very long and complicated but also interesting story.
In 13th and 14th century it was not considered a real villa: it was a land property, a group of houses with the aim of satisfying the economic needs connected with agriculture. This group of houses was completely separated from the other houses located in the nearer town and it was on the extreme border of the village, the limit that separated it from the countries. In 1383 the Visconti family had built a canal in order to deviate the water of the river Seveso towards its lands. When Barnabò Visconti died, the long canal slowly disappeared till it became only a ditch full of mud, while the house was bought, in 1429, by a family coming from Milan, the Rho, Count of the Lomellina, who normally lived in Milan and came to Desio only during the grapes harvest and on other particular occasions.
From the end of the 14th century the house was transformed into a real villa and many families managed the property. After the bankruptcy of the Rhos in 1651 the house was bought by the Cusanis, who asked Piermarini, a famous architect in the Milanese mode they asked for Piermarini, an already famous architect in the Milanese, to build a library inside the house. He designed its structure and directed its building later on. The decoration of the villa, which in part were lost, had to respond to the principle of the celebration of the power of the nobility and, in particular, of the authority of the Cusanis. Nevertheless the Cuisine family had a serious problem: both Marches Ferdinando and his son Luigi lost millions in gambling and in building big villas, accumulating in that way a great quantity of debts.
The Cusanis lost the villa which didn’t have any owner until when an important lawyer of the Middle Class of Milan paid all the debts of the Cusanis, finally succeeding in buying the villa. The aristocratic class will be declassed by the Middle one. Acquiring richness very shortly, they begin investing big capitals in buying noble houses. So the monumental transformation started: the villa, which was bought by the Middle class, had a disposition of the rooms.
Giovanni Traversi bought the villa in 1817 and he wanted immediately to restore the decorations: for that reason the architect Pelagio Pelagi had been called. The Traversis showed off their nobility and wealth by enriching the villa with many beautiful architectures. Pelagi also completed the park (which he had begun in 1794) and contributed in transforming it in the first example of an English park in Italy.
Giovanni Traversi died in 1854 without leaving successors any heirs: so he left all the properties to one nephew of the Antona Cordara family; as soon as he became the new owner he changed immediately this name from Antona Cordara to Antona Traversi. He looked after the restoration of the old chapel whit the collaboration of Luca Beltrami, an architect designer of the beautiful flight of steps. The lawyer Giovanni Antona Traversi had five children: Camillo, Giannino, Bice, Edoardo, Teresita. The three men were disinherited and, in 1900, the inheritance passed to Beatrice’s son, Antonio Tittoni, under the administration of the father Tommaso, nobleman of Roma. Tommaso Tittoni gave much importance to the villa of Desio, thanks to his high political position, in fact he was senator in 1902, foreign minister from 1903 to February 1906 and from May 1906 to December 1909. In the last war the villa, occupied by soldiers of 14 nations, suffered serious damages, so Tittoni decided to sell it.
In 1947 the villa was bought (but the prices were so low that can be considered a donation) by the Missionari Saveriani of Parma and in part by the Milanese industrial Reina, who completed the devastation started during the war.
Now the villa, restaurated, property of the Town Hall of Desio since 1975, shows less decorations than it had at the time of the Traversis and the Tittonis.

TOMMASO TITTONI
Tommaso Tittoni was born in 1855 in Rome where he grew up in a liberal atmosphere and so his political ideas were generally moderate. After taking a degree in law, followed a period of deeper studies in Belgium and England, he became interested in politics with Sella and Minghetti belonging to “Destra Storica”, started in 1876. In 1895, after twenty years of political career, his daughter’ s death and great heart problems obliged him to retire. In this way he took care of diplomatic activity in the town halls of Perugia and Naples. In this period the Villa of Desio was managed by his son Antonio, who decided to build a similar park to the one in use in the IX century with a small lake inside it. In the meantime, exactly in 1902, Tommaso Tittoni was elected senator, on Zanardelli’ s advice, and from 1903 to 1911 he was Foreign Minister. During his office in the Villa of Desio three important meetings were kept. The first, in 1907, with the Austrian Foreign Minister; the second, a year later, with the Russian ambassador and the last one, still in 1908, with the Abyssinian delegation. Then, after his office, he was appointed as the Italian ambassador in Paris in 1919. The last task of his political career was the chairmanship of the Senate. He died in his home town in 1931.

Architectural description

In the 18th century villa Tittoni, which had not acquired the present form yet, consisted of a few rooms (in which there was a sort of administrative office) developed around a simple yard.
After the monumental phase, the space was organized in such a way as to build a similar structure to the theatre. As far as the dimension is concerned, the villa is rather small, with a modest wood structure that doesn’t reduce the imposing impression of the building, even though the monumental look is only an appearance as the façade shows.

The North façade
The north façade was built according to the sober regular line by Piermarini, a famous architect of the first neoclassicism and completely restructured by Pelagio Pelagi, an artist of the last phase of neoclassicism, very keen on the liberty style.
The front is characterised by an apparent monumentality: it is an orthogonal façade that, through an accurate inclination of the top part, gives the view of an illusory height.
Divided into three orders, the façade takes inspiration from the canons of balance and simplicity of the classical art: the lower part is dominated by the tidy lining up of arches, overhung by great rectangular windows with tympanum, separated one from the other by pillars in low relief , surmounted by capitals, an austere tympanum completed the final part of the structure.

The South façade
The south façade consists, in the inferior part, of three arches on which four finely stone carved columns are placed. On them a triangular tympanum decorated with allegorical figures in relief gives elegance to the front.
The style is typically neoclassical characterized by balance and simlpicity.

The wings

In the side prospects the architectonic pattern of the lower part of the building is resumed: typically classic arches are set above rectangular windows, arranged with regularity along the perimeter. By the sides, two service courtyards were created. In the past they were used to avoid unpleasant visions I the main yard. For a further decoration of the villa there should have been statues representing gods from the Olympus in every corner. However, they have never been placed there.
Unfortunately, around 1995, the right wing of the villa was totally destroyed inside by a fire. Anyway, nowadays the internal area can be rebuilt; the luxuriously decorated ground floor was obviously meant to entertain guests. On the second floor there were the bedrooms, while the servants lived on the top floor. The latter was connected to the ground floor by a small staircase for privacy reason, while a bigger spectacular staircase joined the living room and the first floor.

Description of the interiors

When Villa Tittoni was bougth by the Traversis in 1817, it was enlarged and the interiors were restored by Pelagio Pelagi, such a well-known painter, sculptor and architect, that even king Carlo Alberto charged him to plan the renewal of the Royal Palace, becoming painter designed to Royal Palaces decoration.
At that time the owners were Giovan Battista Traversi and his wife Francesca Milesi, enriched members of the middle-class, who supplanted the aristocratic owner Luigi Cusani and changed the rule of the house: the Traversis in fact, aimed at asthonishing and showing the richness and the power of the midle-class family; the villa is now a status symbol. For this reason, each room is very different from the other, in this way an guest passing from a room to the next would be completely enchanted by the alternance of the various styles moving from Neoclassical to Gothic, from Arabian to Barocco. In the winter's period the house wasn't used very much; it was considered a sort of summer house. This fact is testified by the documents revealing that the house had a very few numbers of internal objects and very few books used only to fill the shelves in the library and a great number of chairs used to fill the empty spaces.
Originally the hall was a little portico, later rebuilt with brick, and it was used for important dinners and also as a dancing room. It presents classical elements, decorations and little palms, pilaster strips and capitals with decorations made with golden stucco. The coffered ceiling was painted with a picture representing the sky and other symbolical elements with masks and musical instrumentes. The neogothic room is decoreted with gothic wooden sculptures and also with fanciful additions, like sculptures of mice. The ceiling is painted with the four seasons with Pan in the center of the composition. On the floor the mosaics represent wild animals and sentences by Ovidio inviting people to have a calm life. This room was used as a private dinner-room. Originally there were glass windows decorated by Bernini with pictures of famous poets and their women (for example Dante and Beatrice ,Petrarca and Laura). Unfortunately they were sold out and now they are exposed in Poldi Pezzoli museum.
The Arabian room made by Sidoli is completely in carved wood and on the ceiling there is a purely decorative Arabian inscription. This room was reserved to the ladies and also the Albanian protectorate by Tommaso Tittoni, minister of Foreign Affaires, owner of the house since 1911, is in it.
The column room, also called noeclassical, had a very beautiful coffered ceiling that was destroyed by a fire. Today there is a floor made of Venetian sown ground and on the ceiling there are a series of rounds with puttos playing cards and billiards.
Duke Beltrami, a politician friend of the Traversis, substituted the previous small stairs with a new huge neoclassical one, a clue of the presence of the old stairs are some windows that nowadays cannot be opened and that probably reveal also the presence of an older floor.
Upstairs there are the bedrooms and the wedding-room.

The chapel

The chapel rich in extraordinary decorations, deserves a particular attention. In the beginning, it was thought that the chapel was a remaining of Marini’s residence: in reality documents concerning the reconstruction of the chapel itself show that it represented a constant architectural element of the time, reason for the family pride.
With regard to its setting inside the building, the chapel is exceptionally isolated from the rest of the villa, even though usually it was a place for the social life and for the welcome of guests.
Nowadays the chapel could be used for the celebration of marriages, christenings, or any other liturgical ceremonies.
The building, characterized by a rectangular plan , consists of one aisle, ending with an apse in the presbytery. The small hemispheric dome, surmounting the presbytery, and the modest dimensions of the chapel, contribute to create a rather centralized, typically neo-renaissance space, in accordance with the function of intimate meditation.
The internal walls, where niches are opened, are decorated with pictorial portrayals of saints, angels and with different kinds of stuccoes which enrich the arches, the cippus and the pillars of classical origin.
The chapel was frescoed with the encaustic Etruscan technique which consisted of a treatment of chalk with hot: an effect of marmoreal brightness is acquired and this is emphasised by the warm atmosphere of the golden walls.

The garden

In the park of the villa we can see the innovating contribute given by Pelagio Pelagi to the garden, which, previously, only appeared a simple kitchen garden.
Pier Marini introduced the Italian garden with his inflexible, schematic labyrinthine plan.
Later, thanks to Pelagio Pelagi’s intervention , it was replaced by the English romantic garden, which, by adapting itself to the peculiar structure of the soil, recreated a suggestive physical landscape with hills and ponds.
The villa entrance had an avenue with a perspective similar to the back part of the building. At the back there is a park visible for the 50%, at the end of which you can see the Traversi mill.
Still at the back there is the greenhouse: here citrus trees, pineapples and other exotic trees are cultivated thanks to a sophisticated heating system, also installed inside the building, where several fireplaces had a pure decorative function.