This summer, while in Milan for a personal project, I stumbled upon a small chapel I’d long hoped to see. Tucked away in the city’s northwest outskirts, it was designed in the 1950s by a young Angelo Mangiarotti, a name that resonates quietly yet profoundly in Italy’s design world. Fresh from Milan Polytechnic, Mangiarotti spent time at IIT in America, under the guiding hand of Mies van der Rohe. Mies’ precision and poetics shaped him, inspiring his first project on returning to Italy—a modest chapel created with his friend Bruno Morassutti.

The chapel stands on four slender concrete columns, light and unburdened, its rhythmical concrete roof and glass walls once appearing almost ethereal. Yet decades wore down its elegance, with bombings, misguided repairs, and eventual neglect. By 2015, a long, painful restoration began, completed only after both architects had passed.

On my visit, the chapel felt serene and cool, an oasis amid Milan’s summer heat. I took a few photos, then simply sat, lost in its quiet strength, watching the sunlight fade as shadows spread across the glass walls. It seemed to carry the memory of a more hopeful world—a reminder of beauty, now weathered yet still breathing softly through time.