Why you should experience Via Piero della Francesca in Milan, Italy.
Via Piero della Francesca is a character-rich corridor where Bullona's residential character meets the old Varese road, the surviving fabric of the Borgo degli Ortolani and twentieth-century growth between Sempione and the former Portello industries.
Running through Bullona between Piazza Gramsci and Piazza Firenze, the kilometer-long corridor forms the backbone of the district between Corso Sempione and Via Cenisio, continuing the direction of Via Luigi Canonica toward Milan's northwestern edge. Early twentieth-century palazzetti, ringhiera houses and tree-lined residential fronts establish a remarkably consistent scale, with projecting balconies and decorated façades giving several blocks the proportions of an older metropolitan boulevard. Pedestrian movement establishes its primary rhythm through a succession of neighborhood businesses and residential entrances, sustaining the close relationship between street commerce and housing inherited from the corridor's earlier development. Courtyard buildings and surviving railway architecture introduce another register toward Piazza Firenze, revealing the transition from the former market-gardening settlement into territory shaped by the Fiera Campionaria and Portello. The result is a corridor where Milan's northwestern expansion remains legible through an old regional road, working-class housing and architecture created as the surrounding countryside entered the twentieth-century city.
What you should know about Via Piero della Francesca.
Via Piero della Francesca is best known for preserving the northwestern continuation of the Borgo degli Ortolani, a settlement that developed along the old postal road toward Varese beyond Porta Tenaglia. Water from the Nirone, rogge and fontanili supported vegetable gardens and orchards along the route, giving rise to the community remembered as the Borgh di Scigolatt. The village extended along present Via Luigi Canonica and Via Piero della Francesca, and its position on the Varese approach made it one of the principal settlements beyond the Spanish Walls. Corpi Santi, which contained the borgo, entered Milan in 1873, and the Belinzaghi administration assigned the continuous road the name Via Luigi Canonica in 1878. Urban construction advanced around its outer section during the 1920s, prompting the later division of the road into two named corridors. The section between present Piazza Gramsci and Piazza Firenze received the name of Piero della Francesca, leaving Via Canonica on the older approach toward Central Milan. Ca' Longa at number 34 preserves an architectural remnant of the earlier settlement within that later street. The nineteenth-century cascina was used as a postal facility with stables for horses and carriages before conversion into ringhiera housing, producing a narrow courtyard close to 100 meters long and twenty meters wide. Residential units opened from exterior galleries, with shared sanitary facilities serving the original working-class households. The building survived subsequent redevelopment with its elongated court intact, preserving inside Via Piero della Francesca the domestic scale of the community that occupied the Varese road before the surrounding district became continuous city.
Stazione La Bullona established a separate chapter at number 64 when railway architecture arrived to serve both the developing Fiera Campionaria and the industrial territory of Portello. The station took its name from the cascina previously occupying the site and was constructed between 1925 and 1928 to a design attributed to P. Fariny. Two connected structures formed the complex: a rectangular entrance and ticketing building straddled the tracks in iron and reinforced concrete, and a second body parallel to the railway contained staff accommodation, waiting areas and service rooms. Its architecture captured the transition between Liberty and Rationalism, combining a functional railway structure with late-Liberty friezes across the façade and platform canopies extending toward the tracks. The new stop connected a district undergoing intense residential construction with the exhibition grounds and industrial employment concentrated farther west. Railway expansion eventually placed the Ferrovie Nord tracks underground through this section, and Bullona ceased operation after the new Domodossola station assumed its role in 2003. The former passenger building survived above the altered railway alignment, leaving the corridor with one of Milan's scarce early twentieth-century station buildings after the infrastructure it served disappeared beneath the city.
How to fold Via Piero della Francesca into your trip.
Via Piero della Francesca works as the anchor to an exploration of the Sempione district through a Rationalist condominium that challenged the conventional Milanese street block, a Renaissance suburban villa reshaped for a Spanish governor and a steel tower created for the fifth Milan Triennale.
Begin at Casa Rustici, designed by Pietro Lingeri and Giuseppe Terragni between 1933 and 1935 after the two architects established their Milan studio in 1932. Vittorio Rustici commissioned the project on Corso Sempione 36, where Lingeri and Terragni divided the trapezoidal parcel into two principal residential bodies and connected them across the street frontage with elevated walkways and balcony structures. The commission became one of five Milanese condominiums through which their practice brought Rationalist experimentation into the constraints of the city's speculative residential construction. Continue to Villa Simonetta, whose first nucleus was erected for Gualtiero Bascapè, chancellor of Ludovico il Moro, on agricultural land acquired from the Ospedale Maggiore at the end of the fifteenth century. Ferrante Gonzaga acquired the property in 1547 and commissioned Domenico Giunti to convert it into a prestigious suburban residence, adding lateral wings, establishing the U-shaped plan and creating the nine-arched portico with superimposed loggias that dominates the principal façade. The Simonetta family acquired the villa in 1555, giving the residence the name it retains after centuries of subsequent changes. Conclude at Torre Branca, conceived for the 1933 fifth Triennale by Gio Ponti with Tommaso Buzzi, Cesare Chiodi and structural engineer Ettore Ferretti. Its hexagonal steel structure rises more than 108 meters through Dalmine tubes assembled around an internal elevator cage and helical stair, culminating in a belvedere conceived to survey the rapidly expanding metropolis. Construction transformed a lightweight metal system into one of the great vertical experiments of interwar Milan, and restoration backed by Distillerie Branca returned the tower to use in 2002 after a period of closure. The progression moves from Lingeri and Terragni's reworking of the Milanese condominium through Giunti's Renaissance conversion of a rural residence for Ferrante Gonzaga and onward to Ponti's steel experiment for the Triennale, connecting Rationalist housing, aristocratic patronage and interwar engineering across the territory surrounding Via Piero della Francesca.
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