“Si servì poi dell’uso degli antichi Dori”: il secondo soggiorno milanese di Luigi Vanvitelli e l’affermazione del neoclassicismo in Lombardia

Luigi Vanvitelli’s second stay in Milan had poor results in terms of building and designing. Nonetheless, the enormous legacy in the architectural culture of Austrian Lombardy is a critically acquired fact, thanks to the presence of the pupil and collaborator Giuseppe Piermarini, who was a master of Neoclassicism. The previous episode, such as the facade on the garden of Palazzo Monti Sormani Andreani Verri, designed by Benedetto Alfieri, indicates a horizon of approach to new paths of architecture and decoration, but the most significant junction at the end of the seventh decade of 18th century was the private patronage. In particular, the staircase of Palazzo Bigli, in via Borgonuovo, which disappeared during the Allied bombings in the summer of 1943, represents the most significant and unknown episode.