In February 1876, Eugenio Torrelli Violler, journalist, and Riccardo Pavesi, publisher, decided to found a new daily newspaper. The first issue was released during the afternoon of the first Sunday in Lent. Just 13 days later, Pavesi was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and left the newspaper to independently find the wherewithal to continue its existence. A troubled beginning that conveys an idea of the obduracy of the newborn Corriere della Sera.
It should come as no surprise that the first editor was Neapolitan, just as his successor, Luigi Albertini, was from Ancona. It was and still is part of the style of Milan to absorb talents, notwithstanding their roots. The “Corrierone,” thus christened by the Milanese due to its “bed sheet” size, immediately had an amphibious nature: as an expression of the Milanese entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, it has always been a sounding board for this enlightened, moderate ruling class, but at the same time it has never lost its vocation as a newspaper of national scope, to the point of becoming – as it still is today – the most widely read daily in Italy.
At first the editorial staff worked in a couple of rented rooms in the prestigious Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. Over time, due to the success of the newspaper, a headquarters was set up in 1904 at Via Solferino 28, in the Brera district, with a new building designed by Luca Beltrami, based on the model of the Times of London. In 1988 a new addition to the facility was designed by Vittorio Gregotti.
During over one century of life, Corriere della Sera, the gathering place in print for the intelligentsia not only of Milan, has relied on the collaboration of excellent writers on its pages and in its cultural supplements: Edmondo De Amicis, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Luigi Pirandello, Dino Buzzati, Eugenio Montale, Leonardo Sciascia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Emilio Tadini, Lalla Romano.
LUCA BELTRAMI, ARCHITECT
Milan from the 1800s to the 1900s
Exhibition at the Milan Triennale 1997-1998
Luca Beltrami, the architect and restorer also responsible for the reconstruction of the facade of the Sforza Castle towards the city and, above all, of the Tower of Filarete, was commissioned to design the headquarters of Corriere della Sera, constructed in 1903-04. To complete the project, for which he had also designed the furniture and the lighting fixtures for the main offices and the zones open to the public, Beltrami called in the finest Lombard and Milanese artisans involved in the most important projects in the city at the turn of the century.