Description
The Villa Reale in Milan is a grand neoclassical villa from the late 1700s on Via Palestro, across from the Giardini Indro Montanelli, near Porta Venezia. It houses the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, with nineteenth-century painting and a fine collection of Impressionists, and it hides an English-style garden behind it.
Inside, the neoclassical rooms frame the paintings. Among the most famous are Francesco Hayez's Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni and Giovanni Segantini's Two Mothers, alongside Previati's Divisionist experiments.
The Grassi and Vismara collections, donated to the city in the twentieth century, bring Cézanne, Van Gogh, Manet, Renoir, Matisse and Picasso to the villa, as well as Balla and Boccioni. Not bad for a house that began as a diplomat's buen retiro.
On the main floor is the ballroom, the largest in the villa, with Maggiolini's wooden floor, white columns and gilded capitals. Next to it is the Parnassus room: on its ceiling Andrea Appiani painted Apollo playing the lyre among the Muses in 1811.
The most beautiful facade is not the one on the street but the one at the back, considered the architect's masterpiece: it looks onto the English garden, with a small waterfall among the rocks, a stream, a little lake and a round temple dedicated to Cupid on an island.
The villa was commissioned by Count Ludovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, adviser to the Austrian emperor, as a place to retire at the end of his career. It was built by Leopoldo Pollack, a pupil of Piermarini, between 1790 and 1796. The count, however, enjoyed it for only a short time.
After his death it was bought by Napoleon's Italian Republic, and Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais moved in with his wife Augusta of Bavaria: they are the ones who wanted the lavish interiors. When the Austrians returned, Marshal Radetzky lived here and signed the peace of 1849.
In 1921 the city turned it into a museum. In July 1993 a terrorist attack on Via Palestro badly damaged the villa and destroyed the nearby Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, which was later rebuilt.
Inside, the neoclassical rooms frame the paintings. Among the most famous are Francesco Hayez's Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni and Giovanni Segantini's Two Mothers, alongside Previati's Divisionist experiments.
The Grassi and Vismara collections, donated to the city in the twentieth century, bring Cézanne, Van Gogh, Manet, Renoir, Matisse and Picasso to the villa, as well as Balla and Boccioni. Not bad for a house that began as a diplomat's buen retiro.
On the main floor is the ballroom, the largest in the villa, with Maggiolini's wooden floor, white columns and gilded capitals. Next to it is the Parnassus room: on its ceiling Andrea Appiani painted Apollo playing the lyre among the Muses in 1811.
The most beautiful facade is not the one on the street but the one at the back, considered the architect's masterpiece: it looks onto the English garden, with a small waterfall among the rocks, a stream, a little lake and a round temple dedicated to Cupid on an island.
The villa was commissioned by Count Ludovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, adviser to the Austrian emperor, as a place to retire at the end of his career. It was built by Leopoldo Pollack, a pupil of Piermarini, between 1790 and 1796. The count, however, enjoyed it for only a short time.
After his death it was bought by Napoleon's Italian Republic, and Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais moved in with his wife Augusta of Bavaria: they are the ones who wanted the lavish interiors. When the Austrians returned, Marshal Radetzky lived here and signed the peace of 1849.
In 1921 the city turned it into a museum. In July 1993 a terrorist attack on Via Palestro badly damaged the villa and destroyed the nearby Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, which was later rebuilt.