Castiglioni Palace

"Built by Giuseppe Sommaruga (1867-1917) in 1901-1904, it is somewhat the artistic" manifesto "of Art Nouveau in Milan. The building was built on three floors, with two facades, one main facing the street and a secondary one on the garden, plus the annexes detached from the main body and constituting the stables and the garage.
This building has a base with rough ashlar that recalls the natural shapes of the rock; the other decorations present are a revival of the eighteenth-century stucco.
It is currently the headquarters of the Merchants Union of Milan. (Union of Commerce - Confcommercio).
In 1900 the entrepreneur Ermengildo Castiglioni decided to have a palace built in Corso Venezia: in his intentions the building had to differentiate itself from all the others, and that is why he commissioned the architect Giuseppe Sommaruga, known for several interesting solutions.
This attitude of the client, almost a seventeenth-century nobleman willing to show his greatness, is found in the building (particularly impressive when compared to the rest of the Italian Art Nouveau) and in the desire to create a building with a rather new style for Italy (Art Nouveau , in fact) in a context among the most "" noble "" of the city, almost in an attitude of defiance to the right-thinking and conservative fellow citizens.
A challenge probably lost given that, when the scaffolding was removed from the facade in 1903, public opinion took a strong stand against it until they had two statues of female figures placed above the entrance Portal removed. The two statues, the work of Ernesto Bazzaro, caused scandal so much that satirical cartoons on the story of the Castiglioni palace were published in the Guerin Meschino newspaper in the months following the inauguration (17-24-31 May and 11-14 June and 19 July). The female figures were incomprehensible in their symbolic meaning (in reality they well represented one peace and the other industry), secondarily they were criticized because they did not have a precise role, they were not caryatids supporting the Portal or a balcony, and in the end (but this was certainly the main argument) they accused themselves of being too busty and naked (the Milanese populace began to ironically define it as the Cà di ciapp).
The two statues were thus removed and subsequently placed on the side of the Luigi Faccanoni villa in Milan. The Portal, which remained without these two imPortant elements, had to be modified: it was raised by occupying part of the upper window, which in the remaining part was buffered by a bas-relief: the final result was to remove strength from the central element of the building, that is the Portal and the group of windows on the noble floor that overlooked it, which now results from the same emphasis as the side service Portal, which is enriched above by a beautiful tripartite window.

The whole history of the building can be read in the monograph "" Giuseppe Sommaruga (1867-1917). A progragonist of Liberty "", edited by Andrea Speziali, CartaCanta editore 2017. "