Villa Necchi Campiglio
Rationalist 1930s villa with a walled garden, heated pool and a house museum of period art.
This guide to Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan opens with a foggy night outside La Scala, when industrialist Angelo Campiglio, his wife Gigina Necchi and her sister Nedda decided the family needed a house of its own, hidden behind its own garden. It follows the Necchi sewing-machine fortune into architect Piero Portaluppi's radically modern 1930s design, from a painted zodiac ceiling to Milan's first private heated pool, and then to a second architect, Tomaso Buzzi, brought in only a few years later to soften those sharp rational lines with tapestries and antique furniture. Best heard standing by the pool, where Portaluppi's original vision is easiest to picture.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.