What to See in San Giuliano Milanese: Attractions & Sights

More places of interest

Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo

The church of Santi Pietro e Paolo is the church of the abbey of Viboldone, in the hamlet of that name in San Giuliano Milanese: for its architecture and its fourteenth-century frescoes it is among the important medieval complexes of Lombardy. The abbey was founded in 1176 and completed in 1348 by the Humiliati, a religious movement of monks, nuns and lay people who lived a life of prayer and work around the church: at Viboldone they made woollen cloth and farmed the fields with methods that were new for the time. When the Humiliati were suppressed by St Charles Borromeo, in 1571, the abbey passed to the Olivetan Benedictines, who were in turn suppressed by the Austrian government and forced to leave in 1777. After years of abandonment, in 1940 Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster offered it to a community of religious women led by Margherita Marchi: they are the Benedictine nuns of Viboldone.
What to see
The façade is gabled, of exposed brick with white stone decoration, divided in three by two half-columns and marked by two-light windows open to the sky. The portal is of white marble: in the lunette are the Madonna and Child between St Ambrose and St John of Meda, by the sculptor known as the Master of the Viboldone Sculptures, and at the sides two Gothic niches hold the fourteenth-century statues of Saints Peter and Paul. To the right of the door a plaque bears the date 1348. Above the lantern tower, following Cistercian tradition, rises the conical bell tower, with terracotta cornices and two- and three-light openings.
The interior is a hall, with a nave and two aisles of five bays: the first is Romanesque, the others, of the thirteenth century, Gothic, with terracotta columns and high cross vaults. The frescoes are of the school of Giotto. On the front wall of the lantern tower is the Madonna enthroned with saints, dated 1349; facing it, the Last Judgement attributed to Giusto de' Menabuoi, with Christ in the mandorla, the blessed on one side and on the other the damned, dominated by Satan devouring his prey. Above, two angels roll up the time of history and give a glimpse of the heavenly Jerusalem.
Visiting
The abbey is home to a monastic community: opening times for the church and the times of services should be checked on the official website. The nuns make preserves and run a religious and theological publishing activity.
Our editors' tip
In the building beside the church, on the first floor, is the Sala della Musica: frescoes from the end of the fifteenth century and the first years of the sixteenth that imitate a portico with twelve windows, each full of musical instruments painted life-size in red-earth monochrome. It is a rare record of the instruments in use in Milan in those years; whether it can be visited should be asked of the community.
Chiesa parrocchiale dei Santi Pietro e Paolo

The church of Santi Pietro e Paolo is a parish church of San Giuliano Milanese, in the Borgo Lombardo district. It was built between 1952 and 1953, to a design by Ottavio Cabiati, to serve the new district. It became a parish in 1957, with a territory taken from the parish of San Giuliano Martire.
What to see
It is a church of traditional layout, designed in an eclectic style full of references to the historical styles, from the Romanesque to the Mannerism of the Counter-Reformation. Outside, the walls are of exposed brick, with applied decorations in stone or concrete. The façade, classical in style, ends at the top with a triangular pediment; below is the doorway, sheltered by a pronaos carried on columns.
The interior has a single nave, with a coffered ceiling. Towards the presbytery the transept opens, with two cross vaults at the sides.
Visiting
Opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
The decree that made it a parish, dated 26 September 1957, bears the signature of the archbishop of Milan Giovanni Battista Montini, who six years later would become pope with the name Paul VI.
Chiesa parrocchiale di San Giuliano Martire

The church of San Giuliano Martire is a parish church of San Giuliano Milanese, in the archdiocese of Milan. Of ancient origin, it was first consecrated in 1475. In 1749 it was reconsecrated by Cardinal Pozzobonelli, who described it in a report: from that document we know that the façade had been built to a design by a certain engineer Ruggero and that the interior had a nave and two aisles. In 1933 it was almost entirely rebuilt, keeping of the earlier building only the façade and the two chapels next to it. Between 1962 and 1964 a new intervention, by the architect Giuseppe Mariotti, demolished the structures of 1933 to make room for a hall of modern forms.
What to see
Outside you see the old part: an eighteenth-century façade, richly decorated Baroque, with the bell tower beside it. Of the old building the first bay also remains, with its two side chapels dedicated to the Virgin and to St Joseph: it has become the entrance atrium of the new church, from which a glass wall separates it.
The new hall is set diagonally to the façade. The space is dominated by the diagonal reinforced-concrete beams that carry the roof, and the presbytery is lit by a large polychrome window at the side. On the walls are the copper Stations of the Cross by Walter Miccioli; in the apse a large bronze crucifix on a concrete relief is the work of Giancarlo Marchese.
Visiting
Opening and Mass times should be checked on the parish website.
Our editors' tip
From this parish, in 1957, the territory of the new one at Borgo Lombardo was detached, the church of Santi Pietro e Paolo, built a few years earlier for the newly born district.