this milan apartment is bursting with thousands of twentieth-century masterpieces

the Italian couple that really loved art

It’s a bit difficult to find the entrance to Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano because it’s not housed in a traditional ‘museum.’ Located in the Porta Venezia neighborhood of Milan, there is no grand museum entrance. Instead, you find it by entering one of the towering palazzos, or apartment buildings. It’s one of several of Milan’s ‘house museums,’ former residences that have been transformed to hold vast collections of art and antiquities, opening historic homes up to public view. What makes the former home of Antonio Boschi and Marieda Di Stefano special is its vast collection of twentieth-century art. In their lifetime, the socialite couple rubbed shoulders with famous artists and designers of the period, accumulating about 2,000 pieces from friends and icons alike. What results is a domestic space that holds both the memory of the family and the century alike.

in Milan, the former home of the former home of Antonio Boschi and Marieda Di Stefano now displays their collection of twentieth-century art | all images courtesy of Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano

Antonio Boschi, Marieda Di Stefano, and their cats

The entrance to their former apartment is on the second floor of a building designed by Italian architect Piero Portaluppi between 1929 and 1931. It’s an older building reminiscent of a bygone era for Milan—the floors are mosaic tiles formed in a triangular pattern, and a spiraling staircase running the circumference of the building’s interior leads you to the entrance. The walls are a trompe l’oeil of painted stone. The building was commissioned by Marieda Di Stefano’s father, who envisioned the multistory building as a series of units for his children to live in side by side.

Greeting visitors in the entrance hall of their former residence are two paintings of the couple: I coniugi Boschi (1951) and I coniugi Boschi (1947), which roughly translates to The Boschi couple, or Mr. and Mrs. Boschi. They are half-length portraits of the pair holding their cats, created four years apart by the painter Remo Brindisi. The Italian painter himself has his own house museum dedicated to his works outside of Bologna, designed by the famed Italian architect Nanda Vigo.

view of a guest room in the residence housing paintings like Arturo Tosi’s Songavazzo (1925) and Achille Funi’s Trieste (1933) among others

Donated to the Municipality of Milan

The couple was deeply situated in the Milanese community. Antonio Boschi was a longtime engineer for the high-end tire manufacturer Pirelli, known for its involvement in Formula 1 racing. Marieda Di Stefano studied ceramics and continued to practice her passion throughout her lifetime, with a few of her pieces displayed in the house. Upon their passing, their collections were entrusted to the Municipality of Milan. The collection would be exhibited at Palazzo Reale in 1974 while a more permanent exhibition space was sought.

the entrance to the house museum with a view of ceramic plates created by Marieda Boschi Di Stefano

The House before it was a museum 

After some renovations, the former home of the couple was modified to accommodate the works. The house museum at Via Giorgio Jan, 15, which is beautiful, pristine, and filled with filtered natural light, was not the state of the house while it was being lived in. The couple stored a huge collection in this space. It was so vast that the entirety couldn’t possibly fit on the available wall space.

Photographs taken by Gabriele Basilico in 1982 create a kind of faithful capture of how the home would have looked when occupied by Boschi and Di Stefano. This series was commissioned by Italian Radical design figure and Domus editor Alessandro Mendini (who was also Marieda Di Stefano’s grandson). The floors were covered in a patchwork of what looks to be Persian carpets. There were huge canvases stacked upon each other and leaning against the wall. There were framed paintings puzzle-pieced together to take advantage of all the vertical surfaces that existed between floor and ceiling.

Touring the twentieth century in eleven rooms

Now, the space’s eleven rooms are arranged to take the visitor chronologically and thematically through the 20th century of art: ‘from the Novecento Italiano to Mario Sironi, from the painters of Corrente, Giorgio Morandi and Filippo De Pisis to the so-called School of Paris and the Chiaristi, from Lucio Fontana to Spazialismo and Informale.’ Although many of the works are from Italian artists, there is a section from English artist Ralph Rumney, who was a member of the avant-garde Situationist International movement in Europe. In a room of Giorgio de Chirico works, one can find The School of Gladiators: The Combat (1928). And finally, there are the famed Concetto spaziale works of Lucio Fontana, the infamous slashes through canvas that he became known for.

After making your way through a fairly ordinary apartment made extraordinary by just a sliver of the couple’s collection, there’s a sense of awe at the many functions a house could have: shelter, a meeting ground, a museum, a treasure chest for artistic marvels.

before the museum officially opened in 2003, the couple kept huge canvases stacked upon each other and leaning against the wall as their collection was too big fit on their walls

designed by Piero Portaluppi, the building was commissioned by Marieda Di Stefano’s father, who envisioned the multistory building as a series of units for his children to live in side by side

Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano is one of several of Milan’s ‘house museums,’ former residences that have been transformed to hold vast collections of art and antiquities

project info: 

name: Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano | @casaboschidistefano

location: via Jan 15, 20129 Milan

designed by: Piero Portaluppi

opened: 2003

This article is part of designboom’s MODES OF HABITATION chapter, exploring how the spaces we inhabit can reshape the ways we live together. Discover more stories rethinking domesticity, shared living, and the many forms a home can take here.