Palazzo Archinto

The palazzo of the Archinto family is on Via Olmetto, near Porta Ticinese, one of the oldest parts of Milan. Its origins can be traced back to the fifteenth century. After first belonging to the Visconti and Stampa families, the palazzo passed on to the Archinto, when Camilla Stampa and Filippo Archinto moved in after their marriage, in 1674. Filippo enlarged the palazzo, and his son Carlo commissioned the frescoes by Tiepolo and Vittorio Maria Bigari that decorated eight of the main rooms on the palazzo’s principal floor, or piano nobile. The palazzo belonged to the Archinto for more than a century, until 1825, when it was sold. In 1853, it was purchased by the Luoghi Pii Elemosinieri, a charitable institution (now called the Azienda di Servizi alla Persona Golgi-Redaelli) that still owns it. Between 1955 and 1967, the interior of the palazzo was rebuilt, following the general lines of its previous architectural form. The art collection assembled by the Archinto family and displayed in the palazzo was dispersed in sales in 1862–63, after the death of Carlo’s great-grandson Giuseppe Archinto who had left the family finances in a ruinous state.