Milanese Entryways: A Love Letter to Milan

“Milan is a city that draws you in, that shows itself while screening itself at the same time. It is at once private, grandiloquent and refined.”

— Karl Kolbitz

Ciao and welcome back to our weekly appointment. When people ask me what I love most about Milan my answer is always straight forward: the architectural masterpieces that are its entryways. I find them fascinating, intriguing and captivating -they never seem to disappoint and have the distinct ability to let you linger, enter and experience the true beauty they preserve. Whenever I tell people I live in Milan the first thing I hear is:” but isn’t Milan ugly”. No it’s definitely not, it shows its true beauty to those that look further than the rusty surface, to those that fully explore the singularity and hidden beauty.

In plain sight-every day, the grand wooden portals and glass doors of Milan’s residential homes are opened for pedestrians to discover. Once you step out you are met by extravagant designed walls, floors, stairs and ceilings, every entryway has its unique signature. This idea of the glorious entryways can be traced back to the 17th century where, under the Borromeo bishops, hand in hand with the status of the bourgeois, the entryways became more significant in society. The houses should be build:” bela de denter, pei padroni, brutta de foera, pei mincioni( beautiful on the inside for its owners and ugly on the outside for the fools).After the second world war the innovation of technology and the aesthetics began to change, the architecture of the city became seemingly unconscious of the pre-modern legacy it still held. But through all these transformations in design and taste one thing remained unchangeable, the ingressi - the entryways. We humans will always be drawn to a place of comfort and beauty, making the entryways of Milan timeless and historically significant.

“I fantasise about who the people who inhabit them might be, what their lives may be like. The ingressi reveal these nuances of lives and living to us in the mot subtle and allusive ways.”

— Karl Kolbitz

There are particular features in the entryways that can be observed throughout Milan. Often various colours of marble embellish the floors of the circular, rectangular or sometimes just classically narrow entryways, from time to time the walls are even adorned with marble, which gives the ingress a very elegant and lavish aura. Anything from striped to mosaic marble can be found in Milan if you choose to search. Red carpets enhance the classy and luxurious sensation of the entryways and often also decorate the stairways to the apartments. Gold metal accents in the stairways are also very common adding the certain glamour affect. Occasionally instead of marble walls the architects choose wood which is a typical Milan media to use. Finally, big steel and vivid glass doors separate the courtyards from the entryways. In my opinion a very classy way to walk into your apartment’s dumpster.

I fall in love with Milan every time I wonder its streets, it doesn’t behold you with its raw beauty like other great cities such as Paris does. Its charm lays in its subtleness in the firm invitation to explore the hidden spectacle and in its uniqueness. It is a city that captivates you over time not in seconds, and once it has made its way into your heart, you can never let it go again. Milan feels like home to me now, it has created its little nest in my heart, and I must say that it never gets old to explore it. In the gallery below you can see some photography’s of the beautiful entrances of Milan that the publisher Taschen captured for its book “Entryways of Milan”.