Indro Montanelli Gardens

Town Hall 1
Arrival: via Palestro, corso Venezia
Working hours:: January to April: 6am - 30pm May: 21am - 00pm June to September: 6am - 30pm October to December: 22am - 00pm
How to Get There:: M1 Palestro/M3 Repubblica or Turati - bus 61/94

Area 172.000 sqm.
Year of realization: 1794, 1862, 1881
Architects, respectively: Giuseppe Piermarini, Giuseppe Balzaretto, Emilio Alemagna
Restoration: 1958 and 2002: Milan Municipality Technical Office

What to do at the park

3 play areas, one of which is sustainable and inclusive;
carousels, bumper cars, train on rails, managed by private individuals;
fitness path with fitness area for free body exercises and gym equipment, such as steps, bars, parallel bars, elliptical, made of metal and recycled material;
stroll;
stop and relax;
nursery school;
2 dog areas, one of which is fenced;
water house;
run (running route);
ride a bicycle along the park's avenues;
there are kiosks and bars;
in May: Orticola, flower and nursery market exhibition;
visit the Museum of Natural History
go to Planetary
botanical routes

The park in brief

Porta Venezia is the first public park in Milan, built by the Austrians in 1700 and dedicated in 2002 to the journalist Indro Montanelli. It is an English garden where you can discover small botanical and architectural jewels. You can be surprised by centuries-old trees, such as the monumental Taxsodium, or by the oaks, cedars, rows of horse chestnuts.
Or you can be fascinated by the seventeenth-century Palazzo Dugnani, or the Natural History Museum and the dome of the Planetarium that the Italian-Swiss publisher Ulrico Hoepli first commissioned from Portaluppi and then donated to the city. Not only that: the proximity to Villa Belgioioso Bonaparte and Villa Necchi Campiglio make the Montanelli Gardens an ideal stop on a cycle/pedestrian itinerary in the historical and artistic heart of the city.

The history of the park located within the Spanish walls and originally owned by the Dugnani family, has had at least three important arrangements.

The park was commissioned at the end of the eighteenth century by Viceroy Ferdinand of Habsburg when, having suppressed the orders and acquired the properties of the monasteries of San Dionigi and Carcanine, he decided to transform the area into the first public garden in the city. The task was assigned to Giuseppe Piermarini who created a French-style park, with geometric flowerbeds and well-designed tree-lined avenues, inaugurated in 1794.

A second arrangement was entrusted to Giuseppe Balzaretto who, including Palazzo Dugnani in the park, transformed it in 1882 into an English garden, with leaps, groves alternating with clearings, streams and lakes. He also had a small zoological park built, with aviaries and cages of exotic animals which he placed alongside the Natural History Museum, whose collections were a gift from the last indirect descendant of the Dugnanis. Also due to Balzaretto's project, on an artificial hill, is the Caffè del Parco, which in 1920 became an elementary school.

The third intervention was carried out by Alemagna, former designer of Sempione Park, who renovated the park after the various exhibitions which hosted it during the nineteenth century.

The pavement is gravel and the park is periodically monitored by Volunteer Ecological Guards.

History and Architecture

Between 1782 and 1786 the gardens were built based on a design by the architect Piermarini on an area that belonged to the monasteries of San Dionigi and Carcanine, suppressed under the Habsburg rule of the city. The project is inspired by the Enlightenment principles of rationalization of space and creates a typically "French" layout, evident in the geometric taste of the flowerbeds and in the perspective framing of the tree-lined avenues.

In 1787-88 the project of the "Boschetti", the current Via Marina, was designed with two series of alignments of five rows of trees (lindens, elms and horse chestnuts). The steps that connect the gardens to the Bastions, the gates interspersed with neoclassical vases, the ball playing area where the Planetarium stands today and Monte Merlo date back to Piermarini's project.

In 1862 the New Public Gardens were inaugurated, the result of the design intervention of the architect Balzaretti who integrated the space with Palazzo Dugnani, creating a landscape style garden on the south side and a picturesque garden on the north side with a system of artificial rocks to exploit the existing difference in height enriched by water features and designing the coffee pavilion on Monte Merlo, transformed into a nursery school after the renovation in 1920.

The last design intervention was that of the architect Alemagna which dates back to the end of the nineteenth century and which was necessary to restore the park following the great exhibitions which were held there in the decade 1871-1881. Among the most significant interventions are the large expansion of the lake, the replacement of the Piermarini staircase with a double flight of stairs that goes up to the Bastions enclosing a waterfall inside it and the modification of the ditch - typical "ha-ha ” of the “English” garden – designed by Balzaretti as a barrier between the Villa Reale, via Palestro and the garden.

Between 1890 and 1915 some statues were positioned, the western and eastern limits were modified with the inclusion of the Civic Museum of Natural History, the zoo (later dismantled in the 80s) and the Planetarium. In 2002 the public gardens were renamed in honor of the late journalist Indro Montanelli (1909-2001).

Museums and architectural heritage

The park includes some significant buildings: Palazzo Dugnani, built in the seventeenth century and modified and restored in the eighteenth century, owned by the Municipality since the end of the 1800th century; the Civic Museum of Natural History, designed in 1892 by Giovanni Ceruti; the Ulrico Hoepli Planetarium, designed by the architect Pietro Portaluppi in 1929. Among the statues, noteworthy is the sculpture portraying Indro Montanelli, created in 2002 by the sculptor Vito Tongiani.