What to see · Cologno Monzese

More places of interest

• Chiesa di San Maurizio

  The parish church of San Maurizio al Lambro, a district of Cologno Monzese on the border with Brugherio, Monza and Sesto San Giovanni, is dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows, while the patron saint is Saint Maurice. Work began on 19 March 1905 and the building was blessed by Cardinal Andrea Carlo Ferrari on 5 August 1906, on the very feast of Our Lady of the Snows. The district was then called Malnido: it was the first parish priest, Don Luigi Tagliabue, who asked for the name change, granted by a royal decree of 18 February 1930.

  What to see

  The bell tower, 26 metres high, was built between 1906 and 1907; on Christmas Eve 1913 the municipality had the clock installed. It holds five bells: the four largest were cast in 1906 by the Ottolina brothers of Seregno, the smallest was added in 1931 by the same foundry.

  The church was enlarged in 1939. In 1950 the old wooden altar was replaced by a marble one, itself replaced by the present altar in 1983; on 28 September 1950, with the enlargement complete, Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster consecrated the church and its new altar.

  Visiting

  For the centenary, on 23 September 2006, the Archbishop of Milan Dionigi Tettamanzi celebrated Mass here. It is a working parish church: Mass and opening times should be checked with the parish.

  Our editors' tip

  Elsewhere in the district, in a niche at the corner of via Filzi and via Toti, is the Madonna del Bivio, a statue of the Immaculate Virgin that has watched over the village's main crossroads since 1892; via Filzi leads to the Lambro.

• Villa Besozzi Casati

  Villa Besozzi Casati is the historic palazzo at via Mazzini 9 in Cologno Monzese, today home to the town hall and to a wing of the civic library. It was part of Cologno's old fortified core, which from the Middle Ages belonged to the monks of the monastery of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, and it stands on the base of an old fortified house. It began to take on its present look at the end of the sixteenth century, when it passed to the noble Besozzi family; on 18 October 1798 Count Antonio Besozzi, deep in debt, had to sell all his land and houses in Cologno to Gaspare Casati, father of Gabrio Casati.

  What to see

  The villa follows a double axial layout, oriented east to west because of the spring-fed channel: entrance exedra, courtyard of honour, portico and a large historic garden, later wiped out by a modern building put up to enlarge the town hall. The exedra rests on two piers, once topped by eagles holding shields, the heraldic animal of the Besozzi. The noble residence occupied the U-shaped part of the plan, open to the east onto the spring channel, as was customary in villas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

  Inside, the Besozzi had the ground floor and piano nobile decorated with a seventeenth-century fresco cycle. The art historian Andrea Spiriti attributes it to Giovanni Ghisolfi (1623–1683), who widely spread Roman-style painting in Milan; the hand of Antonio Busca (1625–1684) can also be recognised, at least in the design.

  Visiting

  As it is the town hall, the villa can be seen freely from outside; for the interior it is best to ask the municipality. Among the Casati, Luigi Agostino, a senator of the Kingdom, was mayor of Cologno from 1874 to 1882, and his son Gabrio from 1894 to 1908. The last to live in the villa were the Marquis Alberto Visconti di San Vito and his wife Anna Casati.

  Our editors' tip

  Some of the frescoes are in the north wing, which now houses the civic library: opening times should be checked.

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