At No. 1 Corso Buenos Aires, on the corner with Piazzale Oberdan, looking out of the building’s hallway one can glimpse a well-kept and very unique courtyard. Above the arches there are twelve medallions carved with as many busts depicting characters from Manzoni’s Promessi Sposi. Among them, in the courtyard, here are the tender protagonists Renzo and Lucia, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, the Nun of Monza, Friar Christopher and Don Rodrigo…
The palace was erected by Ferdinando Luraschi at the end of the 19th century, after the demolition of the Lazzaretto not far away, using quite a few of the building’s salvaged materials, including some of the columns on its perimeter. The imposing (for that time!) palace, with its eight floors, broke the strict rule that Milanese houses to the north of the city should not exceed a certain height, partly so as not to obscure the view of the Pre-Alps and Mount Resegone, whose profiles, in the sunset sky, are flooded with pinkish light, from the Lords who lived in Brera and walked or drove there.
Perhaps it was precisely to right the “wrong” of having broken the servitude of the Resegone that they wanted to pay homage, with the decorations of the courtyard of the palace, to the famous masterpiece that tells the troubled story of Renzo and Lucia by Alessandro Manzoni, who so loved those mountains and quoted them in his most famous pages!
A stopover, like the writer’s home, for all Manzonian enthusiasts and to remember “Quel Cielo di Lombardia, così bello quand è bello, così splendido, così in pace“… or maybe today exactly at peace he is not at peace either, but he will be again very soon!
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