VILLA NECCHI CAMPIGLIO

Description

Essentials about Villa Necchi Campiglio in brief

Villa Necchi Campiglio is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary buildings from the 20th century in Milan. Built for the industrialist family Necchi Campiglio, the avant-garde building with its (at the time) very modern interior is worth a visit not only for people interested in architecture. Besides the ornate interior, the villa also houses two art collections.

The history of Villa Necchi Campiglio

The builders of the villa were the siblings Gigina, Nedda and Vittorio Necchi and Gigina’s husband, Angelo Campiglio. The bourgeois industrialist family owned the well-known Necchi sewing machine and household goods company. In the 1930s, the Necchi Campiglios commissioned the architect Piero Portaluppi to design a house in Milan, as they wanted to move their residence to the Lombard metropolis.

Portaluppi was freed from any creative or economic constraints in his planning and was thus able to design a magnificent country house for the family in the middle of the big city of Milan. Because of its avant-garde architecture, the villa is worth a visit, and not just for those interested in architecture. The house was also equipped with almost every modern technology available at the time, such as elevators, a dumbwaiter, an internal and external telephone, a tennis court and a heated swimming pool.

Beginning in 1938, the owners of the house had the garden transformed into an ornate baroque garden. Fortunately, during World War II, the villa was not destroyed and has been preserved in its original form to this day, except for a few parts of the interior decoration. When Gigina Necchi, the last of the Necchi Campiglio family, died in 2001, she bequeathed the house to the Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano. The FAI had the building restored and it was opened to the public in 2008.

The premises of Villa Necchi Campiglio

Today Villa Necchi Campiglio can be visited from the basement to the attic, including the garden, as a house-museum. On the first floor there are the vestibule, the dining room, a billiard room, a smoking room, an office, the kitchen, the storerooms and the rooms for the house services. On the upper floor there are the rooms of the landlords and a guest room. In the attic there are the servants’ rooms and a bathroom.

In addition to the ornate interior of the Necchi Campiglio family, the villa also houses the art collection of Claudia Gian Ferrari from the early 20th century and the collection of decorative art of the 18th century collector couple Alighiero and Emilietta de’ Micheli.