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The Directory › Europe › Italy › Milan
Plate II · iv · a · The City

Milan

Two houses, four minutes apart, behind the shopping streets everyone else came for.

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A quiet Milanese street at dusk, neoclassical facades and iron balconies over wet pavement
Plate II · iv · a · Quadrilatero, at dusk

The city everybody calls unlovely keeps its two best rooms behind a shopping street and tells nobody.

A day, properly arranged
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Not a Monday. Not the week of the furniture fair.

The entries

Two entries, both visited, both walkable in one morning.
An empty Renaissance-revival room with carved walnut joinery and one shaft of cold window light
Interior · Bagatti Valsecchi, first floor

Two brothers spent thirty years pretending it was 1490, and the only thing that gives them away is the plumbing.

JANUARY, 11:50AM
Notes for Milan

Poldi Pezzoli and Bagatti Valsecchi are four minutes apart on foot and want a single unhurried morning between them. Do Poldi Pezzoli first — it opens quieter, and the smaller house rewards a tired eye better than the larger one does.

Both stand behind the Quadrilatero, which means the pavements outside are the busiest in the city and the rooms inside are empty. That gap is the whole pleasure of Milan and I have never known it to fail in winter.

Milan closes on Mondays and thins out entirely in August. Come in January, when the light is flat, the shops are dull and the houses are yours.

← Italy Last walked in January, in fog, which flatters the city. Venice →