Villa Gattoni Cattaneo of Cornovecchio

The Villa Gattoni Cattaneo of Cornovecchio was built by Pietro Maria Gattoni (1766 - 1851) in 1824, as shown by the Stati d'anime of the parish which indicate the presence of a "Palazzo Novo" in the "Corte dei Signori", an old farmhouse adjacent to the parish church which was partially demolished to build the new building.

Pietro Maria Gattoni had continued the business of his father Carlo Giuseppe (1737 - 1820), who had made his fortune in the meat trade and had delicatessen shops in the parish of S. Nazzaro in Brolo in Milan. He had also bought in the Codogno district, first the estate of Cascinazza a Meleti (1779) and then that of Cornovecchio (1804).

The villa has a classic French-style layout, with a central body surmounted by a turret (a cat is carved in relief in the tympanum of the facade, as a symbol of the Gattoni family) and two side wings, which served as stables, storage for carriages, cottages and various warehouses as well as houses for the servants. The garden in front of the house had mainly the function of access for carriages, while the actual garden was the rear one, English-style and in a romantic style Many trees were planted, according to family oral tradition, before the house was built. In particular, the two huge plane trees in the rear garden have been published in a volume by the Province of Lodi as the largest and oldest in the Lombardy Region.

Pietro Maria Gattoni had two sons: Carlo Giuseppe and Leopoldo to whom he bequeathed his properties of Meleti and Cornovecchio, by drawing lots. Therefore Leopoldo, the second son, unexpectedly inherited the land of Cornovecchio and the villa where he moved in 1851, after his father's death, with his wife Clementina Lamberti di Codogno, widow of Giuseppe Folli di Codogno. Brother Carlo Giuseppe went to live in Meleti where he built his villa with a large park.

Leopoldo was an important farmer and merchant and an influential notable of the area. One of Clementina's first-born sons, "Cecco" Folli, was a painter and friend of Gerolamo Induno, also a painter and patriot: they had met during the defense of Rome in 1848.

After the death of Bortolo Gattoni in 1906, the villa and the land of Cornovecchio were inherited by his sister Antonietta. She the latter, after a long illness spent on the Ligurian Riviera, died in the same year and left her assets to her children by the notary Gaetano Cattaneo. It was Francesco, with his wife Carmela Zazzera, who took over the shares of the villa and the fund inherited from the brothers with the profits deriving from the activity of the Antonio Zazzera company, the first Italian dairy, and who settled in the Cornovecchio house.

A third period of "splendor" began for the villa: in fact, in those years the windows were made that close the three access arches to the atrium frescoed by Induno and the mosaic floors of the atrium itself, of the studio and of the corridor, as well as other works.

Francesco and Carmela lived mainly in Codogno in Palazzo Zazzera in via Garibaldi, but they spent long summer periods and often from spring to autumn in Cornovecchio. This tradition was maintained even when the four children became adults and two of them married: Antonio with Anna Biancardi and Gaetano with Luisa Biancardi (first cousins), while Leopoldo and Giuseppina did not marry.

In particular in the month of September until the start of school, the Cornovecchio house was the center of life for the whole family.

With the disappearance of the four Cattaneo brothers, the subsequent inheritances and divisions led to the current situation of ownership of the Cornovecchio villa, divided between the cousins ??Francesco and Serafino Cattaneo.

Map: Villa Gattoni Cattaneo of Cornovecchio