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The remains found allow us to read the conformation of the acute triangle plan of the fortified bastion with its internal buttresses, known from historical cartography. Outside ran the defensive ditch. Other remains run parallel to the Feltrinelli; a larger portion above, made of bricks and blocks of Adda strain, has been carefully restored. The bastion is part of the walls approximately 11 kilometers long (the longest in length at that time in Europe), built between 1550 and 1560 by order of  Don Ferrante Gonzaga, governor of Milan, who joined the star-shaped fortifications around the Castle, they expanded the city and designed its heart shape. They surrounded it with a moat on the outside and with powerful walls supported on the inside by vaulted buttresses and an embankment. Having lost their defensive function, in the second half of the eighteenth century the terraces were transformed into a panoramic promenade, arranged with hanging gardens and rows of trees, where you could walk or ride a carriage. With the opening of the new axis towards the Monumental cemetery, the two toll booths of Porta Volta by Cesare Beruto were built on the tip in 1880. 

The future: the tender for the completion of the "two pyramids" project and the new green areas

The Superintendence therefore intervened by indicating new requirements for the future construction of the area, so as to exclude any interference with the archaeological finds: the project for the new building was thus modified providing for a reduction of the actually buildable area (approximately 600 square meters ) and the building rights that can be placed, which went from 3.035 to 2.816 square meters of gross floor area for tertiary use. According to the new configuration, on the 2.200 square meters between viale Montello and via Volta there will be a smaller building than the Feltrinelli, 700 square meters of public spaces, aimed at valorising the excavations, and a new green area of ​​550 square meters adjacent to the Shared Garden of Lea Garofalo, the green area of ​​approximately 1800 mXNUMX managed by citizens, which will be preserved. By the end of the year the municipal area will be put out to tender to identify a private developer to carry out the project.

Furthermore, as foreseen by an agenda linked to the Territorial Government Plan approved on 14 October, the urbanization costs linked to the implementation of the project will be linked - in addition to the arrangement of the area and the maintenance of the toll booths already foreseen in the plan - to the planting of an area now used as a car park along the Bastioni di Porta Volta and the creation of a tree-lined row along Viale Pasubio.

The Administration has already developed a project hypothesis, illustrated this afternoon, for the two environmental interventions that will interact with the 3.300 square meter linear park under construction along Viale Crispi and the new green area that will be built next to the second "pyramid". In particular, a new tree line of 250 meters consisting of approximately 35 trees is planned along Viale Pasubio and a new green area of ​​approximately 2.000 square meters along the Bastioni di Porta Volta. The new intervention will also lead to the reconstruction of all the sidewalks along Viale Montello and Via Volta and the completion of the cycle/pedestrian path along Viale Montegrappa. 

“Piazzale Baiamonti is currently an unfinished project – declares the Urban Planning Councilor Pierfrancesco Maran –. The presence of Feltrinelli was the first step in its regeneration, together with the decommissioning of the petrol station. Now we need to proceed, on the one hand completing a project of notable architectural quality, and on the other guaranteeing a greater consistency of greenery in the neighbourhood, in line with the objectives of the Territorial Government Plan. We therefore thank the Superintendency and the Herzog & De Meuron studio for their support in the redefinition of an intervention that will improve the urban quality of an area of ​​the city which between the revitalization of via Sarpi, piazzale Cimitero Monumentale and piazza XXV Aprile and the reconversion of the so-called  Ex Enel areas is constantly evolving”.

"The  Herzog & De Meuron studio - according to the superintendent Antonella Ranaldi - has designed a 'brilliant' unitary intervention in the architectural solutions of the oblique cut at the ends and the modular frame extended to the entire casing, creating particular optical effects played on the geometry of the parallel straight lines on vertical and inclined planes. The completion involves the twin batten, but much shorter so that the Shared Garden is maintained. During the reclamation of the Tamoil, significant sections of the bastion emerged at - 40 centimeters deep. It was asked to maintain this testimony which allows you to read the plan of the cusp bastion. This led to the elimination of the underground floors and also a modification of the project so that the archaeological remains were visible, as a public area, inside and outside as a garden. discovery was not an 'accident' in the process, but an opportunity welcomed by the Municipality and the designers, in line with the intervention inspired in a calligraphic way by the bastion to form the new modern spire, in the co-presence, in the revised project, between memory, archaeological finds and contemporaneity in an urban and landscape arrangement with rows of trees". 

For the Herzog & de Meuron design studio “The Porta Volta intervention is an intrinsically Milanese project, inserted in a large new green area for public use. With their scale, structure, repetition and having been conceived as twin constructions, the new buildings draw on the themes of Milanese urban planning and architecture, which over the course of history have produced a series of emblematic buildings, for which the city of Milan is widely known and admired." 

Gphotographic alleria