Palazzo Bigli

Palazzo Bigli stands in Milan's Borghi district, a short walk from Via Monte Napoleone, and it rewards anyone who slows down enough to look up. The noble Bigli family, who came from Rovato and held lands across the Milanese and Pavese regions, began building it in 1500. Work continued under the Aliprandi family, who took the palace over, and if you step into the entrance hall you can still find Ambrogio Aliprandi's initials in the barrel vault, framed by vine decorations.

Look at the façade and you are seeing two eras at once. Luigi Baj redesigned it in 1841 in a Neo-Renaissance style, yet he kept the original Renaissance portal intact: Corinthian pilasters, a high cornice carrying a Latin inscription, and a design modelled on the portal of the Banco Mediceo, built fifty years earlier and attributed to Michelozzo. Through that portal you reach a courtyard ringed by porticos on all four sides. Each side has five brick arches on cross-vaults of differing depths, carried by stone columns with composite Renaissance capitals, and the volute keystones above them bear noble coats of arms.

The detail worth hunting for: traces of early sixteenth-century frescoes in the style of Bernardino Luini survive on the courtyard walls, the portico and the vestibule. Five centuries of painting, brick and stone, all within a few steps of Milan's busiest shopping street.