A band of yellow majolica flowers on a brown ground, and underneath it the straightest Liberty facade in Milan.
At a glance
Casa Donzelli stands at Via Vincenzo Gioberti 1, in the Porta Magenta quarter. It was built between 1903 and 1904 to a design by Ulisse Stacchini, twenty years before the monumental Central Station that made his name, and it is the earliest of the three houses the industrialist Beniamino Donzelli commissioned in this part of Milan.
History
In 1903 Milanese Liberty had a dominant model: Giuseppe Sommaruga’s Palazzo Castiglioni, then rising on Corso Venezia, heavy, sculptural and emphatically floral. Stacchini went the other way, towards the straighter and more geometric language of the Viennese Secession. Donzelli, who would commission two further houses from Via Revere to Via Tasso over the following decade, was buying into that second current from the start.
What you see
The front divides into three vertical bays: a central body in exposed brick set against two lateral bodies in cement, a contrast of material rather than of ornament. Balconies with elaborate wrought iron run across the whole facade; local guides attribute the ironwork to Alessandro Mazzucotelli, who worked on Stacchini’s other Donzelli house in Via Revere. The top floor is crowned by a loggia balcony and marked by a band of majolica tiles — yellow flowers on a brown ground — which is the one openly decorative gesture on an otherwise sober front.
Cultural significance
The house documents the arrival of the Viennese current in Milan at almost the same moment as the floral one, not after it. Placed beside Palazzo Castiglioni of the same years, it shows that Milanese Liberty was never a single style but an argument between two, conducted street by street and client by client.
Key facts
- Architect: Ulisse Stacchini
- Built: 1903–1904
- Patron: Beniamino Donzelli (1863–1952), industrialist
- Style: Milanese Liberty in the Viennese Secession manner
- Decoration: majolica band with yellow flowers on brown, wrought-iron balconies attributed to Alessandro Mazzucotelli
- Address: Via Vincenzo Gioberti 1, Milan
- Coordinates: 45.4682 N, 9.1708 E
Practical information & getting there
Metro M1 Conciliazione or M2 Sant’Ambrogio, about ten minutes on foot. A private apartment building: the facade is what you see. Taken with Via Revere and Via Tasso it completes the Donzelli circuit, which can be walked in half an hour and covers ten years of changing taste.
Sources & resources
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