Castiglioni Palace

Built by Giuseppe Sommaruga (1867-1917) in 1901-1904, it constitutes the artistic "manifesto" of Art Nouveau in Milan. The building was built by the Costruttori F.lli Galimberti company on three floors, with two facades, a main one on 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. (Trade Union - Confcommercio)
The building derives a substantial part of its interest from the high quality of the materials and artistic and craftsmanship, according to the typically liberty objective of the "total" work of art that involves all artistic and craft disciplines. Among the suppliers and artisans, for example, the Porroni di Canzo firm, which dealt with the sarizzi with great skill, and the Corda and Malvestito firm, which supplied the stocks, played a particularly imPortant role.
The entrepreneur Ermenegildo Castiglioni, who in 1886 had inherited a great fortune from his grandfather Ermenegildo Castiglioni, decided in 1900 to build a building in Corso Venezia, in Milan. In his intentions the building had to differentiate itself from all the others and to this end he commissioned the architect Giuseppe Sommaruga, known for several interesting solutions.
The original door of the building towards Corso Venezia.
This attitude of the client, almost like that of a seventeenth-century nobleman, willing to show his greatness, can be 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 ( the liberty, in fact) in a context among the noblest of the city, almost in an attitude of defiance to the right-thinking and conservative fellow citizens. A challenge probably lost since, when the scaffolding was removed from the façade in 1903, public opinion took a strong stand against it to the point of having two statues of colossal female figures placed above the entrance Portal removed. The two statues, the work of Ernesto Bazzaro, caused such scandal that satirical cartoons on the story of the Castiglioni palace were published in the newspaper Il Guerin Meschino 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 lastly (but this was certainly the main argument) they accused themselves of being too busty and naked (the Milanese populace ironically defined the building as the Ca 'di ciapp, or House of the buttocks).
The two statues were thus transferred to the warehouses of the Galimberti company, the company which had been entrusted with the construction of the building, and subsequently placed on the side of Villa Luigi Faccanoni, also in Milan. The Portal, which remained devoid of 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 above it, which now results from the same emphasis as the side service Portal, which is enriched above by a beautiful tripartite window.
Regarding the modification of the decorations on the facade, the architect Formenti wrote in the April 1905 issue of L'Edilizia Moderna:
"We frankly believe that the façade was much better sooner than later, and we know that the architect Sommaruga himself reluctantly had to submit to the desire expressed by the owner, also believing that the first idea was much more original and appropriate to the whole complex of the building, while the subsequent fallback, was also a priori, not very suitable. In fact, it is not possible to remove decorative elements of a facade so easily all at once, to replace them with others, when those decorative elements have been studied organically merged with all the other remaining parts "
The interior furnishings were destroyed by the American troops who occupied the palace in 1945 and used them as firewood. The decorations, the wrought iron and the lamps were saved.
The building was subjected to monumental restrictions on March 5, 1957. In 1965 the Milan Football Association moved its headquarters to this building, where it remained until the following year, when it moved to via Filippo Turati 3.
In 1967 the heirs of the Castiglioni family sold the building to the Unione del Commercio due to the excessive maintenance costs and the tax relating to the construction of underground line 1. Arch. Eugenio Gerli and Eng. Giorgio Keffer signed the project for the transformation of the building into offices with the maintenance of only the entrance, the staircase, the veranda, some rooms on the main floor, the facades and the building on Via Marina. The rest of the building was emptied, an auditorium was built under the garden, the building on Via Marina was incorporated into a modern building. The Liberty scholar Rossana Bossaglia opposed the project and asked the Superintendency to deny the authorization and to use the building as a . Despite the constraint, the Superintendent of the time Gisberto Martelli approved the project after a long correspondence with the Unione del Commercio which threatened to abandon the building to decay.

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.