Palazzo Cusani

Palazzo Cusani stands in Milan’s historic Brera district, where its seventeenth-century architecture meets the city’s urban streetscape. Agostino Cusani built the palace near the vanished Church of Sant’Eusebio. Gerolamo Cusani later commissioned Giovanni Ruggeri to redesign the exterior in late Roman Baroque style. Mistilinear window frames and bulging balconies give the facade its distinctive movement.

Piermarini reshaped the internal facade in elegant Neoclassical forms during the late eighteenth century. The contrast remains visible. Luigi Cusani sold the palace to the Kingdom of Italy in the early nineteenth century, bringing military use to the building. The Lombardy Army Military Command and a NATO representative office now occupy the palace. Wartime bombing damaged the interiors, yet much of their original eighteenth-century decoration survives. Three cannonballs remain embedded in the rear facade from the Five Days of Milan.