Casa dei Botta

Casa dei Botta stands at 14 Via San Maurilio in Milan, with a restrained façade shaped by centuries of change. The building dates from the fifteenth century, while renovations gave its exterior an austere eighteenth-century appearance. Stone mouldings frame the ground-floor arches, providing the façade’s clearest decorative detail. Beyond the entrance hall, vaulted ceilings lead into a courtyard with a surviving Renaissance portico.

The portico follows a Bramantesque design associated with the Renaissance architect Donato Bramante. Columns from the three vanished sides remain embedded in the surrounding walls. Beside it, a single-storey section combines faux arches with rusticated stonework. These features preserve traces of the courtyard’s earlier four-sided arrangement.

Inside, a grand staircase rises behind a stone balustrade with pilasters and Ionic columns. Their capitals carry the scroll-shaped ornaments that distinguish the Ionic order. The building’s strongest impression comes from this meeting of fifteenth-century origins, eighteenth-century masonry, and Renaissance courtyard design.