The chapel of villa Mirabello belongs to the 17th-century villa in the Parco di Monza, built by the Milanese Durini family: it is the oldest of all the buildings that now stand in the park.
What to see
The villa was built between 1656 and 1675 at the wish of Count Giuseppe Durini, to a design by the architect Gerolamo Quadrio, on a site along the Lambro chosen for its particularly pleasant position, which gave the villa its name, Mirabello. The plan is symmetrical, U-shaped, with the courtyard of honour open to the landscape; the central body has an elegant portico with pink granite columns, while two small towers at the ends may be remains of an earlier military function. The frescoes were entrusted to Federico Bianchi, who had already worked for the Durini palace in Milan; in the chapel Ercole Procaccini also worked, painting the Nativity of the Virgin.
In the mid-18th century Cardinal Angelo Maria Durini turned the villa into a small palace thanks to the architect Giulio Galliori, enriching it with late-Baroque decorations and with frescoes of ancient and contemporary poets in the ground-floor hall, and made it a place of study and culture, frequented among others by his friend Giuseppe Parini; on the hill opposite he had a second, smaller villa built, the Mirabellino. In 1805 the property was expropriated for the park Napoleon wanted around the Villa Reale, and the viceroy Eugenio Beauharnais and his wife Augusta Amalia of Wittelsbach fell in love with both villas, above all the Mirabellino. Back in Habsburg hands, the villa received neoclassical restorations until 1859, when the Habsburgs left Monza for ever; the latest restoration, begun in the summer of 2008, rebuilt almost the whole roof while preserving the original frescoes.
Visiting
The villa stands in the Parco di Monza, along the Lambro; access to the villa and the chapel depends on current activities and should be checked with the body that manages the park.
Our editors' tip
Look in the portico for the pink granite columns and the two small towers at the ends of the central body: they give the villa its particular profile, between a house of leisure and a possible memory of an earlier military role.
