Italian Adventure: Weekend Wandering

On Saturday we decided to walk down to Sforza Castle. It was built in the 1300's and guarded the gate to the city wall. Look at that fabulous tower! We just took a look at the outside and a little of the first courtyard and decided to leave the museums that are located inside for another visit.

Here I am inside the first courtyard.

This is the fountain just outside the castle.

We had lunch at a pasticceria that was established in the late 1800s. George had foccacia with rocket, mozzarella, and fresh tomatoes, and I had foccacia with roasted tomatoes. Yum!

On Sunday we decided to walk to a house museum called the Villa Necchi Campiglio. On the way we spotted this beautiful garden - the loveliest we have seen in Milan so far.

We plan to return to this beautiful place. George thinks it would be a good place to do a little jogging and Penny thinks she could keep him company by reading a book, knitting, and counting his laps!

After checking our trusty Milan city map...

we continued on our journey

Here is the stunning Villa Necchi Campiglio! It was built between 1932 and 1935 it "embodies the entry of modernity into the traditional architecture of the urban villa." Angelo Camiglio, an upper-middle-class industrialist, built the home and lived there with is wife Gigina Necchi and her sister Nedda. Gigina and Nedda's brother started the Necchi sewing machine company. I remember Necchi sewing machines from when I was a girl.

This is a view of the side of the house. That glass area is the veranda - my favorite room in the house. Those are huge double panes of glass that really bring the out-of-doors into the home. The gardens of this villa are also stunning.

The beautiful swimming pool was the first heated pool built in Milan.

And over in a corner of the garden we discovered the most wonderfully fragrant bush - osmanthus fragrans. It's pleasant fragrance filled the whole area of the garden where it was planted - delightful! George has already looked it up on the internet and determined that it can be planted in southern California so I think we may have a botanical reminder of our sojourn in Italia!