Landriano Castle

Probably built around the year 1000, the beautiful Castle of Landriano represented for centuries an imposing fortress, surrounded by a moat, to defend the southern area of the Milanese territory.

The first informations date back to the year one thousand but this building acquired all its beauty around 1531, when the great chancellor Francesco Taverna bought the manor, now in ruins, with all the feudal reasons from Alessandro Landriani. The state of neglect of the Castle pushed Francesco to a radical restoration, responding to the needs of a place of rest, leisure, otium, but also an expression of the economic-political power assumed by the family.

The building, once a fortress, was transformed into an elegant Renaissance country palace. Towers, battlements and a drawbridge were demolished and frescoes and grotesque decorations were added as decorations.

The most relevant rooms from an artistic point of view are certainly: the reception room, the study, the hall of coats of arms, the cupids room, the dressing rooms, the music room, the entrance hall and the grand staircase, which still have the frescoes by Andrea Tibaldi commissioned by Francesco Taverna, confirmed by the payment documents in the Taverna archive.

Of the internal courtyard we only know the detail of the end of the portico's work is known in 1582, as Antonia Beccaria in Taverna sued the builders for the wrong positioning of some columns. An appeal that she won with a reconnaissance by Pellegrino Tibaldi, who made her obtain the reconstruction of three columns.

There are many pieces of the castle that have been created and then moved, for example many fireplaces have been removed from the Taverns, leaving only the shadows or the hollows in the halls.

Not to mention the artworks such as paintings and statues, divided by the heirs or sold to third parties, such as two statues, the first one depicting a Venus rising from the waves and the second one a Venus with Cupid, which today decorate the hall of the Borromeo palace on Isola Bella, sold for three thousand lire to Renato III Borromeo.