Casa del Manzoni

Alessandro Manzoni

Poet and Novelist | From Piazza San Babila to Via Manzoni | Milan in the first half of the 19th century

Biography

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You had heard the story of Marianna de Leyva, who became Suor Gertrude, the Nun of Monza, who knows how many times in the Blondel home, right in front of Palazzo Marino, where the unfortunate Marianna spent her youth. And you had crossed the Lazzaretto where Renzo finds Lucia, at the end of his journey, many times in your urban strolls, those you took to soothe your nerves, and jotted down in your notes. Because it was all still standing when you were alive. Only towards the end of your century did they decide to demolish it, to allow the progressive destiny of the city to lead to boundless growth. Today all that remains of that immense urban quad are a few vestiges on Via San Gregorio, next to a building by Vico Magistretti, the church of San Carlo as a traffic island and four salvaged columns, used to embellish the courtyard of Palazzo Luraschi, on what was known in your novel as the Stradone di Loreto, and is now called Corso Buenos Aires. Just as you made a city into a novel, here Ferdinando Luraschi set out to make a novel into architecture, placing twelve busts portraying the characters of your masterpiece in the niches of the courtyard.

Life gives, like takes away. Providence knew how to be cruel, acting in mysterious ways. You had had much, you had lost much: your beloved Henriette, at Christmas in 1833, your children, in the cradle or in the prime of life, one after the other; even Teresa Borri, your second wife, did not survive you. You, head bowed, continued to revise your work, eternally dissatisfied.

You had erected a monument more lasting than bronze. You had become a living monument in your own right. You were Don Lisander, Senator of the Realm, honorary citizen of Rome. Admirers, artists and emperors came to visit you at Via Morone. After Garibaldi’s visit your son Pietro convinced you grant the impermeable facade on Piazza Belgiojoso an image worthy of your prestige. The architect Andrea Boni created the front of a neo-Renaissance palace for you, in terracotta, with that historicist taste that was so in vogue in those years, with the Bagatti Valsecchi brothers.

Now that house resembled the grand old man of national literature you had become, no longer the youth that had bought it for himself and his family. Now you belonged to the city, you were a part of it, so much so that Milan adapted to you: in the Cathedral, where bonfires once burned in the square, lit by rioters who were taking the bakeries by storm, your solemn funeral was held; your body lay in state at Palazzo Marino; at San Marco, where Renzo too had arrived in his wanderings, Giuseppe Verdi conducted the Messa di requiem in your memory; and what had been Corso di Porta Nuova took your name.

Your body, Alessandro, now looms over the others in the Famedio, the Temple of Fame of the Monumental Cemetery. Your spirit lives on at Via Morone 1. The home of Italian literature.

 

 

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