In Milan’s northeast, Via Mozart honours his Milan-composed debut opera. Nearby, Villa Necchi Campiglio – hidden behind unassuming gardens – epitomises Italy’s modernist innovation.

Steel magnate Angelo Campiglio commissioned architect Piero Portaluppi in the 1920s to build a social hub on then-rural Milan outskirts. Completed in the 1930s amid tensions between fascist neoclassicism and modernist functionalism, the villa pioneered razionalismo italiano: merging industrial modernity with artisanal tradition.

Portaluppi rejected modernist purism, using geometric flourishes – diamond ceilings, Greek-key balustrades – bridging industry and craftsmanship. Renaissance loggia proportions and medieval-inspired brickwork reimagined history through abstraction, proving modernity could coexist with heritage.

The villa’s fate mirrored Italy’s upheavals: seized by fascists, later a Dutch consulate, then donated to heritage trust FAI. Its interiors preserve interwar masterpieces by de Chirico and Morandi, while design elements – from radiator grilles to parquet patterns – inspired B&B Italia textiles and LA mansion fixtures.

Beneath winter sunlit magnolias, the villa endures as a manifesto: architecture need not sever past from future. Its DNA persists in global designs, challenging what contemporary structures might leave such legacies.