History

The site that Bossi would transform had a mundane past. The land at Via Malpighi 12 had been occupied by the Società Anonima degli Omnibus (S.A.O.), the company that ran Milan’s horse-drawn tram network from 1861 onward. When the electric tramway system made horse-drawn carriages obsolete at the turn of the century, the company’s operations in the area wound down and the land was freed for residential development, prompting Cav. Giacomo Guazzoni to commission the palazzina that now bears his name.

Bossi drew up the project and the building rose between 1904 and 1906. He brought in Alessandro Mazzucotelli — arguably Italy’s finest wrought-iron artist of the Liberty period — to produce the balcony railings, entrance grilles, and interior stair railings. Watercolorist Paolo Sala probably added fresco panels depicting putti, floral garlands, and female figures that animate the lower register of the facade. The result was immediately legible as a program: Bossi had not decorated a building but had orchestrated a collaboration between architecture, metalwork, and fresco painting into one surface.

The building received legal protection as a monument of cultural heritage on 3 May 1965, placing it among the earliest Liberty structures in Lombardy to be formally recognised. The late twentieth century brought conservation work: architect Piero Arosio of the R.A. firm restored the entrance hall and staircase decorations in 1997, consolidating the original fresco layers and the iron elements. A full restoration of the facade followed in the early 2020s, returning the cement reliefs and iron balconies to their post-construction appearance. Today Casa Guazzoni stands on Via Malpighi alongside Casa Galimberti — at number 3 on the same street — as the two anchors of Milan’s Liberty itinerary in Porta Venezia.