The historic home

Villa San Carlo Borromeo

Over a period of thirty years, Villa San Carlo Borromeo has undergone momentous restoration, in which the memory, history, culture and art expressed in this historic home have been rigorously respected.

These targeted interventions have served to restore the Villa (12,000 sq m, the central building alone) to its original splendour. Sixty guest rooms and suites, with wall frescoes, works of art and antique furniture, frescoed, coffered ceilings, technological and telematic systems offer an incomparable and inimitable venue.

Each element has been selected and designed in every detail: an extraordinary example not only of salvaging, but of actually enhancing a property. For today it stands as the icon of the second Renaissance, the intellectual, entrepreneurial and financial salon of Milan, the palace of artistic and cultural tourism.

The Villa has twenty halls of different sizes, elegantly furnished, with capacity for up to 900 people, with air conditioning and natural light.

Permanent Exhibition of Antonio Vangelli, La festa del Paradiso

Antonio Vagelli was born in Rome in 1917 into a family of noble origins, the last-born in a long line of architects, painters, sculptors and musicians.

In the Thirties, he frequented some of the most notable Italian artists around: Spagnoletti, Caproni, Betocchi, Gatto, and many other intellectuals of the time. He began his series entilted Il Circo e Le Maschere, and published some of his drawings in the magazines “Lettere oggi” and “Risorgimento”. He exhibited his work alongside that of Emilio Vedova and Giulio Turcato, and at the first exhibition of Libera Associazione Arti Figurative, of which he was a member.

The Forties and Fifties marked a turning-point in his art. He began to paint geometric bridges, industrial ladscapes, and his interests became clearer, also as a result of his numerous travels to Belgium, France and Denmark.

In 1972, in a gallery in via Margutta, he met the artist Antonio Vacca, with whom he formed a close friendship.
In 1999, the major one-man exhibition Antonio Vangelli. La festa della vita was held at Villa San Carlo Borromeo, and Spirali published an art book of the same title. The artist died in Rome in 2004.

His works continue to be exhibited at the Villa San Carlo Borromeo Museum, and at the collective exhibitions Il ritratto. Le radici artistiche e culturali dell’Europa (2005), La scuola di Roma (2006) and Il bello, l’arte, la scrittura. L’Europa, la Russia, la Cina, il Giappone (2007), and L’incarnazione del colore e la scrittura della luce (2007).

Visit the Antonio Vangelli website

The Caves of San Carlo

Visit the Villa’s website

Photogallery • Sala delle Muse

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