Why BASE Milano matters.
BASE Milano is a magnetic creative center where Tortona's postindustrial character meets a vast former manufacturing plant recast for contemporary culture, independent production and public experimentation.
Set along Via Bergognone near Via Tortona and just steps from Via Stendhal, the complex occupies a substantial portion of the former Ansaldo works where long industrial elevations, repetitive steel-framed windows, internal courtyards and broad workshop volumes preserve the scale of the manufacturing district that once extended across this section of Southwest Milan. The entrance leads into spaces whose high ceilings, exposed structural systems and deep floor plates retain the proportions required by heavy industrial production. Via Tortona and Via Bergognone surround the complex with converted factories, studios, cultural institutions and later architectural interventions that have made the former industrial belt one of Milan's principal creative districts. Internal circulation opens the immense building through interconnected halls, stairways and gathering areas without obscuring the repetitive construction of the original workshops. The result is a large cultural complex whose present activity remains physically anchored to the industrial architecture that shaped Tortona during the twentieth century.
What defines BASE Milano.
BASE Milano is best known for converting 12,000 square meters of the former Ansaldo industrial complex into a cultural center devoted to creative production after more than a century of manufacturing history on the site. The first factory building rose on Via Bergognone in 1904, when engineer Roberto Züst established a plant for automobile and truck production. AEG Thomson Houston acquired and enlarged the works in 1908 for electromechanical manufacturing before Galileo Ferraris took control in 1915 and expanded the property across additional ground. Franco Tosi briefly held the complex in 1918, followed in 1921 by Compagnia Generale di Elettricità, whose continuing expansion added workshops and extended the industrial frontage along Via Bergognone and Via Tortona. Ansaldo occupied the complex during the 1960s for production associated with locomotives, railway carriages and tram vehicles, connecting the plant with one of Italy's major engineering companies. Industrial retreat left portions of the compound vacant during the following decade, and the Comune di Milano acquired the property from Ansaldo in 1989 with the intention of establishing cultural and social uses. Teatro alla Scala workshops entered portions of the former factory in 1995, beginning a conversion from heavy manufacturing toward artistic production. A larger cultural strategy followed during the 2000s, when David Chipperfield's work within the compound prepared the museum project that opened as Mudec in 2015. The Comune had begun another regeneration process in 2014 through Officine Creative Ansaldo and a public selection for management of 12,000 square meters devoted to creativity and innovation. BASE Milano emerged in 2016 from that process, turning a chain of automotive, electrical and railway manufacturing buildings into a permanent center for contemporary creative work.
Onsitestudio transformed BASE through an architectural campaign developed from 2014 to 2019 under Angelo Lunati with a project team led by Tommaso Brambati. The intervention treated the existing industrial building as a 12,000-square-meter architectural whole whose scale exceeded the conventions of an interior conversion. Large workshop volumes remained recognizable as new circulation and occupation patterns were inserted across several levels, preserving the building's industrial dimensions as an active component of its new use. The project accommodated resident creative organizations alongside spaces for exhibitions, performance, collaborative work and temporary cultural programs, allowing different activities to occupy the former factory simultaneously. BASE subsequently became home to 200 resident creative projects and surpassed 400 organized events and 500,000 annual presences in figures published by the Comune. The Istituto Nazionale di Architettura recognized the project in 2020 for urban regeneration in Lombardy, connecting Onsitestudio's architectural intervention with the wider reuse of Tortona's manufacturing territory. Municipal plans approved in December 2025 opened another phase for the former Ansaldo compound, with future cultural uses tied to buildings released through the planned relocation of Teatro alla Scala workshops to Rubattino. BASE consequently belongs to an unfinished conversion of the wider factory site, with its first 12,000 square meters establishing a working model for the continuing cultural occupation of the former Ansaldo works.
How BASE Milano fits.
BASE Milano works as the anchor for a daytime exploration through Southwest Milan using three nearby sites that move from a former railway freight corridor converted into public landscape through a medieval double church on the Naviglio Grande into the historic basin where Milan's canal system once transferred goods toward the inner city.
Begin at Parco Don Luigi Giussani, created in 1935 on ground previously occupied by the freight yard connecting Porta Genova with Scalo Sempione, a railway link used extensively for livestock destined for Milan's slaughterhouse. Enrico Casiraghi converted the abandoned railway territory into a public garden organized through tree groups, paths, resting areas and a circular fountain. Expansion followed in 1963 with a municipal swimming pool designed by Arrigo Arrighetti, whose saddle-shaped suspended roof and glazed perimeter introduced a striking postwar structure into Casiraghi's landscape. A 2004 intervention renewed the park, and the grounds received the name of Don Luigi Giussani in 2006. Continue to San Cristoforo sul Naviglio, a rare double church formed from two adjoining religious buildings constructed during different periods along the route from Lomellina into Milan. The northern church preserves Romanesque origins, a fourteenth-century terracotta portal and a late thirteenth-century apse; an adjoining hospital existed by 1363. Gian Galeazzo Visconti promoted the southern church around the turn of the fifteenth century, with an inscription establishing completion by 1404 and connecting its dedication with Visconti commemoration. The two churches remained functionally separate until 1625, when large arches opened through their shared wall, creating the two-nave interior visible within the paired facades. Frescoes by Bassanolo de' Magistris and work associated with the Zavattari circle preserve the artistic culture of early fifteenth-century Milan inside the small complex. Conclude at Darsena, the historic basin where the Naviglio Grande, Naviglio Pavese and inner Milanese waterways formed a major commercial interchange for goods entering the city. Its development connected canal transport with the Ticinese district, supporting the movement of stone, foodstuffs and other cargo into Milan across centuries of navigation. The basin's relationship with the Naviglio Grande places San Cristoforo upstream on the same water system, turning the final portion of the route into a physical reading of the infrastructure that supported Southwest Milan long before Tortona became an industrial district. The progression moves from Casiraghi's conversion of railway ground into public landscape through a Visconti-era religious complex shaped beside the Naviglio into the commercial basin sustained by that waterway, exposing three earlier systems of transport, settlement and exchange around the territory now occupied by BASE Milano.
Where your story begins.
Foresyte Travel reveals places that feel extraordinary long before you arrive.
Experience premium editorial crafted for luxury travelers.
