Quadronno (district of Milan)

Palazzo Via Quadronno 24, known as "the first vertical forest"

Casa della Meridiana, Via Paolo Marchiondi, 3, by Giuseppe de Finetti

House of the Sundial or "Casa della Meridiana", information stele of the Touring Club

Quartiere Quadronno is a district ("quartiere") of Milan, Italy, called also Quartiere Quadronno-Guastalla. It is located within the Zone 1 (the historical core of the city) and it is centred on Via Quadronno. Quadronno is the coolest, high luxury residential neighbourhood in Milan. The name stems from Medieval Italian "Cadronno" derived from Old Lombardic meaning the name of a beautiful, blue river that surrounded the area. Quadronno was the only area within the defensive walls of Milan, in which plants and trees grew, in particular sacred mulberry plants. Usually inside the defensive walls there were no trees to have visibility for safety of the city.

Quadronno is the best neighborhood for feeling a luxury vip "milanese". The entire Brera district has the aura of an aristocratic cultured nobility.

Places and events of interest

• The Palazzo Antico Bosco Verticale, a world masterpiece of the 1950s designed by Angelo Mangiarotti and Bruno Morassutti
• The Bar Quadronno, opened in 1964, a historic venue where international high fashion designers, such as Miuccia Prada, gathered
• The iconic buildings of the starchitects of the 50s that surround the neighborhood

Monuments and places of interest

Civil architecture

The neighborhood includes various buildings of global interest, such as the palaces of star architects from the 1950s who created the design system in Italy, mainly in the Italian rationalist style and in the MAC-Movimento Arte Concreta movement.

• Palazzo Calchi, Corso di Porta Vigentina, Headquarters of Municipality 1 of the Historic Center of Milan, Council Hall.
• Archivio Diocesano, Via San Calimero, which includes not only archival funds produced by ecclesiastical subjects

Piazze

• Piazzetta Mondadori
• Piazzetta Crocetta
• Piazza Andrea Ferrari

Religious architecture

• Santa Maria presso San Celso, Via Vigoni
• Chiesa di Santa Maria al Paradiso, Corso di Porta Vigentina
• Basilica di San Calimero, Via San Calimero.

It is, after the Milan Cathedral, the most important religious building in the history of Milan. The oldest mention of the church is found in an epigram of bishop Ennodius in 474-521. It is a basilica of early Christian origin, dedicated to one of the first bishops of Milan, adjacent to the Diocesan Historical Archives and a stone's throw from the Convent of the Visitation. In the excavations carried out in 1905 during which some bricks dating back to the factory of King Theodoric (493-526) were found. It also seems that a temple of Apollo stood near or in its place, information that can be obtained from the "De situ civitatis Mediolani", a text from the 9th-10th century. From inside the church you can go down into the entirely frescoed crypt, in which there is the well of San Calimero, where, as has been handed down to us, Calimero, then the fourth bishop of Milan. The church was built around the well and according to legend on July 31st, the feast day of San Calimero, the water from the well was given to the sick to drink because it was believed to be miraculous. What remains of the ancient church today is above all the sixteenth-century crypt, with a vault frescoed by the Fiammenghini. Furthermore, a small fresco survives (Madonna between two saints, 15th century, attributed to Cristoforo Moretti), a Crucifixion by Cerano and a Nativity by Marco d'Oggiono (altered by recent repaintings which make it illegible in several places, but which demonstrates how d'Oggiono was inspired by the Master Leonardo da Vinci). Other medieval frescoes are found in the adjacent sacristy. Other important works are the neoclassical main altar with a circular ciborium supported by Corinthian columns; Altar of Sant'Arialdo da Carimate with a bas-relief depicting Saint Erlembaldo Cotta. For the modern frescoes, the painter Augusto Lozzia (1896 – 1962) lent his mastery; On the choir loft to the left of the presbytery, behind a three-light window supported by small columns, there is the pipe organ, built by Giuseppe Bernasconi in 1884 and restored by the Mascioni company in 2014.

• Basilica di San Nazaro in Brolo, Corso di Porta Romana
• Santuario di Maria Bambina, Via Santa Sofia
• Basilica si Sant’Eufemia
• Monastero della Visitazione or Monastero delle Salesiane della Visitazione

Natural areas

• Guastalla Gardens, created by the Guastalla nobles
• Giardini Piazzetta San Calimero
• Oriana Fallaci Gardens in Via Crivelli, created as a scenic backdrop to the design buildings that inspired Boeri's Vertical Forest
• Giardino Segreto Bazlen Foà

Culture

Art

Via San Calimero by Michele Cascella, 1966, Museum Gallerie d'Italia, Banca Intesa Collection

The street art is very present in Quadronno, in a real open air museum, in via San Calimero, the street located between via Santa Sofia and Via Francesco Sforza, next to the church of San Calimero is the old rectory building, whose façade was entirely repainted by the street artist Ivan Tresoldi, famous for his poems scattered on the walls of the city. The mural is a Gothic-inspired black and red writing that seems to have come from a page of an ancient manuscript. The work was commissioned with other names of important artists like Paolo Bordino and Laura Pasquazzo, by the Gaetano Pini orthopedic institute which, to celebrate its 140th anniversary, with the support of the Cariplo Foundation and the patronage of the Municipality of Milan, developed Wall Art. Ivan Tresoldi's, known as the graffiti poet, murals continue on the façade of the Diocesan Archive adjacent to the rectory, while on the other side of the square, along the wall of the Gaetano Pini hospital, Wall Art unfolds, the very long street art work by Orticanoodles (Walter Contipelli and Alessandra Montanari): 14 Milanese celebrities depicted in shades of brown and yellow, interspersed with equally famous quotes. The artist Orticanoodles, who created 14 murals in shades of brown and yellow dedicated to Milanese personalities. Fourteen celebrities who frequented the neighborhood, depicted in shades of brown and yellow, interspersed with quotes, Luchino Visconti, Giò Ponti, Gianfranco Ferrè, Gian Maria Volontè, Mariangela Melato, Claudio Abbado, Alda Merini, Franca Rame, Enzo Jannacci, Giorgio Gaber, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Elda Mazzocchi Scarzella, Marco Ferreri.

Theatres

• Teatro Carcano

Links

• Quadronno Bag