Palazzo Durini
Palazzo Durini at Via Santa Maria Valle 2 in Milan, now home to the Alessandro Durini Foundation, has medieval origins.
It was once the residence of the Counts of Monza, who still live there today and enjoy it as a private residence, yet open to artists and art lovers.
Palazzo Durini has been declared of artistic interest by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. It was the residence of Vercellino Visconti, Duke of Milan, and through various inheritances, it became part of the Durini family. The Baroque courtyard and neoclassical façade bear witness to a succession of renovations over the centuries, and the interiors are rich in late Baroque stucco work attributed to Martino Knoller. The palace was inhabited in the early decades of the 19th century by the painter and collector Giuseppe Bossi, and the sculptor Antonio Canova maintained his Milanese studio there.
House museum
Palazzo Durini was one of the first house-museums in Milan to be opened to the public. Among its numerous works of art, it housed Mantegna’s Dead Christ, now in the Brera Museum, Leonardo’s drawings, now in the Ambrosiana Museum, and Durini’s extensive collection of ancient coins, now in the museums of the Academy of Venice.
Bossi taught painting courses there, thus establishing the first Milanese painting academy, recognized and established by the Napoleonic government. Upon the master’s death, the academy was moved to the Brera Palace.
The palace today
Today, the palace is owned by the Alessandro Durini Foundation.
The ground-floor rooms are a succession of spaces furnished with important paintings and historic furnishings from the renowned Durini collection, many of whose works are on display in Milanese museums such as the Castello Sforzesco and the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, where they arrived in the late 1950s thanks to a donation made by Don Teobaldo Durini of Monza. All the rooms are arranged around a beautifully and harmonious courtyard, typical of 17th-century Lombardy.