Villa Necchi Campiglio
Villa Necchi Campiglio is a severe, elegant, and artistically generous house. Designed and built between 1932 and 1935 by architect Piero Portaluppi for Angelo Campiglio, his wife, Gigina Necchi, and his sister-in-law, Nedda Necchi, the villa is an icon of Italian rationalism.
The Necchi-Campiglios were a family of Lombard industrialists who owned a cast-iron manufacturing company in Pavia in the 1930s. The story goes that one night, on their way to La Scala opera house, their chauffeur got lost in the surrounding fields – now the Via Mozart. Campiglio was so enchanted by the landscape that the next day he decided to buy a plot of land there, and entrusted the ensuing architectural project to Portaluppi, already known in Milan for works such as the Casa degli Atellani and the Planetarium.
The villa first caught the eye of director Luca Guadagnino, who had long been searching for the perfect location for his forthcoming film, the 2009 masterpiece I Am Love.
“I wrote a script that called for a cube of marble with a big staircase and sharp surfaces,” he told T Magazine's Armand Limnander in 2010. “I was banging my head trying to find a home that suggested great wealth but also a restrained sensibility.” When he finally stumbled across photographs of the abode in a book, he knew his hunt was finally over.
“It shows the obsession with perfection and details that the Milanese bourgeoisie have,” he explained. “Old money always comes with great charm.
The film stars Tilda Swinton and the film is worth watching for her wardrobe as much as it is for the interiors of Villa Necchi Campiglio.
