The Monumental Crociera

The Sforza hospital and the Crociera

The Sala Crociera of the Law and Humanities Library is located in the prestigious Renaissance complex of Ca’ Granda in Via Festa del Perdono, a hospital for the poor commissioned by Francesco Sforza and his wife Bianca Maria Visconti. The layout of the building, inspired by the symbol of the cross, was organised into two cross-shaped wards inscribed within a square that defined four internal courtyards, also square in shape. These two sections were connected by a large rectangular courtyard at whose centre stood the church of the Annunciata. The cross-shaped wards were designed to accommodate patients: one for men and the other for women. The right-hand Crociera was designed to provide the city with a state-of-the-art hospital, equipped with facilities that were extremely rare at the time. The monumental works were entrusted to the Florentine architect Filarete and were completed in 1465. Heating for the four arms, approximately 95 metres long and around 10 metres wide and high, was provided by three enormous fireplaces, while beside each bed there was a small built-in window niche that functioned as a cupboard. At the centre of the two arms stood an altar for religious services, surmounted by a large octagonal dome with small tabernacles on the arches. The roof consisted of planks crossed by wooden beams. Equipped with drainage systems, the Crociera also had sanitary facilities: the destri, vaulted corridors running along the walls supplied with running and rainwater. The windows were very large in order to ensure ventilation and natural light.

Partial destruction of Ca’ Granda during the Second World War and restoration works

Between October 1942 and August 1943, Milan was bombed by Allied forces. The bombs dropped between 13 and 16 August 1943 caused the partial collapse of the façade on Via Festa del Perdono, the destruction of the Cortile d’Onore and its porticoes, and serious damage to the cloisters. The hospital was therefore transferred to the new Niguarda site. In 1947, restoration works began on the two sides of the main courtyard, entrusted to Ambrogio Annoni and Egizio Nichelli, the latter serving as site director from 1946 to 1951. Nichelli resigned in 1951 after having gathered and catalogued all the surviving fragments and begun the reconstruction of individual elements using photographs taken before the bombings. In 1949, Nichelli produced a document outlining the new intended uses of the complex (Rectorate and the Faculties of Law, and Arts and Philosophy), from which it emerged that the architects intended to convert the Sforza Crociera into a library. From 1949, the technical board included Ambrogio Annoni, Amerigo Belloni and Piero Portaluppi, assisted by Alberto Borromeo and Liliana Grassi. After Annoni’s death in 1954, the building site was entrusted to Portaluppi, assisted by Liliana Grassi for the interior design and by Alberto Borromeo (who resigned from the project in 1958). It was decided to demolish the remains of the second Crociera begun in the seventeenth century (the one intended for male patients) and to build a new section between 1951 and 1954. The new Crociera included the lecture rooms for the Faculties of Law and of Arts and Philosophy, as well as the Aula magna. Reinforced concrete, steel tie rods and full-height transparent walls were used in the construction of the new structures, employing high-quality materials.

The combination of materials and the use of natural light as an essential element of spatial design made the intervention a successful example of integrating modern architecture within a historic structure.
 

Inauguration of the new headquarters of the Università degli Studi di Milano

In 1958, with the completion of the restoration of the Cortile d’Onore, carried out using the technique of anastylosis (the meticulous reconstruction of a structure using its original fragments), the new headquarters of the Università degli Studi di Milano were officially inaugurated. In the following decades, restoration works increasingly saw Liliana Grassi play a leading role — professor at the Faculty of Architecture from 1960 to 1972, and later at the Faculty of Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano until her death in 1985 — under whose supervision the courtyards Farmacia, Ghiacciaia and Legnaia, the façade on Via Francesco Sforza, and the interiors of many institutes were completed.

Sala Crociera and Sala Sottocrociera

Work still remained to be carried out on the Sforza Crociera, and restoration began in 1975. Grassi’s aim was to restore the Crociera to its original fifteenth-century appearance through a meticulous analysis of documentary and iconographic sources. For functional reasons, Grassi created within the Crociera, at the eastern and western ends, two suspended iron-and-glass structures that were completely reversible and independent both structurally and visually from the ancient walls, making it possible to clearly perceive the spatial organisation as originally conceived by Filarete. The two rooms, intended for degree discussions, conferences and seminars, were connected to the ground floor by descending staircases. The Crociera was handed over to the Università degli Studi di Milano on 31 October 1984 and, since 1990, has housed the Law consultation room of the Biblioteca delle Facoltà di Giurisprudenza, Lettere e Filosofia (now Biblioteca di Studi giuridici e umanistici). Similarly, Sala Sottocrociera, an underground space mirroring the Crociera that originally served as a pantry and laundry, was converted in 1989 into a reading room for humanities materials.

Sources

G. Agosti, J. Stroppa, La Ca’ Granda da ospedale a università. Atlante storico-artistico, Milano, Officina Libraria, 2017. 

L. Grassi, La Ca’ Granda, Storia e restauro, Milano, Università degli Studi, 1958.