Parco Sempione

Parco Sempione stretches from the Sforza Castle to the Arco della Pace: thirty-eight hectares of lawns, an artificial hill and a lake laid out from 1890 on the castle's former parade ground, among a century of monuments.

Why it matters

The park occupies ground once planted as the Visconti and Sforza ducal hunting park, later flattened into the castle's Piazza d'Armi for military drills. When Milan outgrew its walls in the 1880s, citizen protests stopped developers from covering the ground, and the city's Beruto plan reserved it as a public garden. Architect Emilio Alemagna built the park from 1890 (traditionally dated 1888–1894) as a grand English romantic landscape: winding carriage drives, a lake with an island, soft hills such as the Monte Tordo, and vistas deliberately framed between the castle and the neoclassical arch at the far gate.

What to notice

The Arco della Pace, an arch completed under Austrian rule after Napoleon's fall, stands at the park's northern end. Other landmarks include the Arena Civica, the Palazzo dell'Arte of 1933, the Civic Aquarium pavilion built for the 1906 International Exhibition, the Torre Branca designed by Gio Ponti with Cesare Chiodi and Ettore Ferrari, and the Ponte delle Sirenette, an 1842 iron bridge moved into the park in 1930. Later works include Giorgio de Chirico's Mysterious Baths fountains and Alberto Burri's Teatro Continuo, recreated in 2015 after its 1989 demolition.

Context and history

Alemagna's brief was civic theatre: connect the monument of Sforza power with the monument of restored monarchy in one romantic picture. The park became Milan's principal public ground for celebrations, expos and sport — the Arena hosted everything from Napoleonic horse races to twentieth-century concerts — while the 1906 International and the birth of the Triennale made its edges a showcase of design. Its monuments kept accumulating: a bronze Napoleon III by Francesco Barzaghi, cast by 1881, waited until 1927 for its pedestal, and the Fontana dell'acqua marcia followed in the late 1920s. Plantings follow the historical tradition of nineteenth-century Milanese species, so cedars, planes, magnolias and oaks now form the mature canopy. The municipality manages the park as public space, with its historic monuments and mature plantings forming part of the design.