Bicocca degli Arcimboldi

Bicocca degli Arcimboldi is a Renaissance villa on Viale Sarca in the Bicocca district of Milan, Italy, about five kilometers north of the city center, built as a country residence for the noble Arcimboldi family in the second half of the fifteenth century, likely between 1464 and 1488. The three-level rectangular building is fronted on its east side by a columned portico of five round arches and contains fifteenth-century frescoes, including scenes of courtly life in its so-called hall of the ladies. It stands near the site of the 1522 Battle of the Bicocca, and after the Arcimboldi line died out in 1732 it passed through several owners before the Pirelli company acquired it in 1918, restoring it and using it first as a rubber museum and later as executive offices. Now surrounded by urban development, it remains, in Pirelli's own description, one of the rare surviving examples of fifteenth-century civil architecture built in the countryside.