Monluè Park

Town Hall 4
Entrance: via Monluè, via Fantoli
Opening hours: free access
How to Get There:: Tram 27

Area: 106.600 sqm
Year of realization: 70's
Designers: Milan Municipality Technical Office

What to do at the park

walk
stop and relax
running and cycling
have a picnic
discover them plant of the park

The park in brief

An ideal destination for trips out of town thanks to its vegetation, among old mills and meadows, the Monluè park owes its name to the wolves, mons luparium, which populated the area in the Middle Ages. The fact that it was the seat of a Cistercian monastic centre, founded by the Humiliati of Santa Maria di Brera in 1200, also gave it a picturesque beauty.

The Monluè park is a grange, intended both as a building and organizational structure, consisting of a central building with a closed courtyard, with monastic buildings and others dedicated to agriculture. After the dissolution of the order of the Humiliati and several changes of ownership, it became the property of the Municipality of Milan in 1964.

The park, which runs along the right side of the Lambro river, not visible, has large lawns, groves and rows of poplar trees between ancient buildings and the Romanesque-Gothic church of San Lorenzo. Among the suggestive trees there are horse chestnuts, catalpas, poplars, a red-leaved myrobalan negundo and weeping willows.

In the ancient Benedictine "grangia" there is the Caritas Ambrosiana which manages a welcome community.

History and Architecture

The park extends between the ring road and the Lambro river on the rural site which was called "Monte dei lupi" due to the wolves that infested the area ("Montis luparii", later called Monlové and today Monlué) and which was home to a thriving Cistercian monastic centre, founded in 1200 by the Humiliati of Santa Maria di Brera.

After the suppression of the monastic order by San Carlo Borromeo in 1571, the complex became a flourishing agricultural company surrounded by fields, in which the irrigated meadow alternated with crops: a very rare example of a "grangia", that is, a monastery surrounded by farms and agricultural cottages. At the beginning of the 1900s it became the agricultural estate of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio and from the 60s it was progressively abandoned by the inhabitants.

The area, owned by the Municipality since 1964, was designated as a park in the mid-70s and has maintained its rural character with large green spaces intended for lawn.

A detailed plan was approved by the municipal council which provides for dense reforestation and the creation of cycle and pedestrian paths in order to connect the parks of Municipality 4: Forlanini and Monlué.

Architectural heritage and artefacts