Baggio Park

Town Hall 7
Arrival: via Anselmo da Baggio
Opening hours: always accessible
How to Get There:: bus 67 

Area: 37.800 sqm
Year of realization: 1964
Designers: Milan Municipality Technical Office

What to do at the park

  • playground; 
  • stroll; 
  • stop and relax; 
  • run along the avenues; 
  • basketball court; 
  • picnic table with benches; 
  • dog area; 
  • go to library

In the park there is a self-cleaning toilet and mobile toilets in spring and summer.

The park in brief

The park is a green oasis where children have a dedicated area, kids can play basketball and anyone can relax on the benches among the Atlas cedars, beeches, oaks and an ancient specimen of mulberry, morus alba, witness of the silkworm breeding and the ancient spinning mill of Baggio. 

What is now a park, in 1300 was the garden of the Olivetan monastery, who chose Baggio because it was close enough to Milan. Over the years the monastery expanded and became a grange, with agricultural plots, farmers' homes, a spinning mill and an ice house. The order was suppressed by the Austrians in 1700 and the monastery, abandoned by the monks, underwent various vicissitudes until part of it became public property and then the seat of Municipality 7.

Of its past, the terracotta façade of the monastery with overlapping loggias and the remains of an ancient cloister are still visible from the park. After it was entirely used as a public garden, a silent and popular Municipal Library was built on one side.

The flooring is in concrete, self-locking and asphalt.

The current park was the garden of the Olivetan monks, who settled in Baggio in the 1773th century. Despite a dispute that lasted for years, the Monastery was suppressed under Austrian rule around 50. Following abandonment by the monks, the building suffered looting and tampering which compromised its valuable frescoes and changed its intended use. It was transformed into a rural home and became "Cascina Monastero", it was inhabited by farmers who cultivated the surrounding fields until the 1960s. Saved from a building speculation that wanted it demolished, it was acquired by the Municipality in 7, renovated and used as the seat of the Zone 1964 Council. The surrounding lawn was laid out as a park in 7, maintaining the ancient rectangular structure of the monastic garden. In the garden of the headquarters of the Council of Zone 1935, an ancient mulberry tree still survives which testifies to the breeding of silkworms inside the farmhouse: in fact, to supplement their meager wages, the farmers resold the silkworms to a spinning mill in Baggio, active until to XNUMX.

Architectural heritage and artefacts

There is a part of the old monastery, remodeled several times and which became a farmhouse at the end of the 1700s, while maintaining the architectural characteristics of the Lombard fifteenth century. Inside the park there is an interesting architecture from the 60s: the Baggio Library built in 1964.

Main tree species

  • sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus)
  • Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum)
  • hackberry (Celtis australis)
  • hornbeam (Carpinus betulus)
  • Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica)
  • red-leaved myrobalan (Prunus cerasifera 'Pissardii')
  • beech (Fagus sylvatica, F. sylvatica 'Purpurea')
  • English oak (Quercus robur)
  • mulberry (Morus alba)
  • horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum)
  • Siberian elm (Ulmus pumila)
  • black pine (Pinus nigra)
  • black poplar (Populus nigra)
  • Cypress poplar (Populus nigra 'Italica')
  • black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia)
  • red oak (Quercus rubra)
  • sophora (Sophora japonica)

Worthy of note are an ancient specimen of mulberry (Morus alba), groups of Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) and beech trees (Fagus sylvatica Purpurea).

Gallery

Subjects: 

Updated: 18/04/2024