Villa Necchi, Milan

“Villa Necchi makes me think of a ship of fools,” says I am Love director Luca Guadagnino, in a New York Times interview (see Leading Mansion).

“It was completed right before World War II, when people still thought naïvely that everything was going to be all right and believed in this idea of conquering the future, except that the future was about constant labor to maintain a select few,” Guadagnino says.

Designed by Italian rationalist architect Piero Portaluppi and built for the Necchi family between 1932 and 1935, this ‘ship of fools’ perfectly captures a moment in time for a small class of Italian industrialists.

Nedda and Gigina Necchi, and Gigina’s husband Angelo Campiglio, were enriched by mechanisation. Their wealth came from sewing machines and hardware, and they poured buckets of this new money into a building that materialised their status.

The design is new world sophistication, with an emphasis on function. Glass and iron are given as much attention as old world materials such as marble. It’s austere from the outside but totally luxurious inside, in a 1930s high-society cruise-liner style, complete with portholes on the upper floor.

Gone are the grand old fireplaces and ramshackle antique furnishings found in villas from earlier centuries. Villa Necchi is all about futurist precision. Bespoke detail. And linoleum floors in the kitchen because that’s much more hygienic.

Seven uniformed staff were employed at the time to keep things afloat. At least one of them would have kept watch on the electronic board in the staff quarters, which lit-up when service was required in the Fumoir or the Biblioteca, the tennis court or pool, to list just a few.

Power and politics inevitably underwrites wealth. In Villa Necchi, we see an expression of the power and politics of pre-war Italy, which aligned itself with facism.

We learn during our tour of the villa that Gigina Necchi and her husband befriended Spanish and Bulgarian royalty, and had apartments in the villa set aside for these probably impoverished aristocrats whenever they chose to visit.

We also learn that the fascists requisitioned Villa Necchi during the war and used it as their headquarters in Milan. 

And we’re told that when the family resumed occupation of Villa Necchi after the war, they replaced the functional austerity of Italian rationalism with decorative silks and rococo and the like because that was what old wealth was supposed to look like.

So it makes perfect sense that Guadagnino chose Villa Necchi as the location for I Am Love, a film which speaks about beauty, status and loss.

Without heirs, the last surviving Necchi, Nedda, bequeathed the villa in 2001 to the non-profit Fondo Ambiente Italiano (the National Trust for Italy). 

The foundation has since restored Villa Necchi to its original pre-war condition, and runs frequent guided tours. Don’t miss it.