Palazzo Arese Borromeo is a noble residence in Cesano Maderno. The earliest information dates from 1626, when Giulio Arese ordered a fortified structure on the family lands to be demolished in order to build a residence there. The project was carried out by his son Bartolomeo III, president of the Senate of Milan: the architect and the phases of the building work are unknown, but work began in 1654 and at his death, twenty years later, it was almost finished. The palace passed to the Borromeo Arese, who gave it its greatest prestige at the end of the seventeenth century and, with Renato III, the Rococo decorations of several rooms. In 1849 the Austrians confiscated it and made it a barracks; ten years later an uprising drove out the garrison and the palace, partly damaged by an attempt to set it on fire, went back to the Borromeo. The last residents lived there until 1970; in 1987 it was bought by the town council, without its original furnishings, which had been moved to the Borromeo palace on Isola Madre.
What to see
The central block is quadrangular, with a courtyard in the middle, and faces west onto a square shaped as an exedra. The façade has three sections of different heights, with the doorway between Doric pilasters on rustication and a wrought-iron balcony. To the south is a hexagonal tower, built on the remains of a medieval one, to the north the chapel. On the east side a Genoese loggia of three double bays looks onto the formal Italian garden; beneath it runs a double portico with the busts of the Caesars.
Thirty-three rooms are decorated with frescoes, with many mythological subjects, by Ercole Procaccini the Younger, the Montalto brothers, Antonio Busca, Giovanni Ghisolfi, Giuseppe Nuvolone and Federico Bianchi. At the centre of the main floor, above the doorway, is the Salone dei fasti romani, the reception hall: in the lower band the frescoes tell the history of Rome, with kings and emperors, in the upper one ladies and gentlemen look out from a balustrade. There are also the Gallery of the Liberal Arts, the Aurora room and a nymphaeum.
Visiting
The interiors are reported to be visited on guided tours, while the park is public; part of the space is used as a conference centre. Days, times and bookings should be checked on the palace's official website.
Our editors' tip
Ask about the ice house. It is entirely underground, shaped like an upturned truncated cone, lined with exposed brick, and entered by a door in the upper part; around it runs a vaulted ambulatory with the recesses where food was kept. Below, ten metres down, is a round cellar with a granite ambulatory, where the barrels were stored.
