Giardino della Guastalla, Milan

Giardino della Guastalla is a public park whose most striking feature is a seventeenth-century fishpond, built in the Baroque style with two linked terraces, stairways, and pale granite balustrades. The garden covers only 12,000 m2, yet it belongs among Milan’s oldest public gardens. Its history reaches back to 1555, when Paola Lodovica Torelli, Countess of Guastalla, founded a college and monastery devoted to educating noble girls without money or dowries.

The park opened to the public on 10 August 1939. Look at the small historic shrine: it contains a terracotta group showing the penitent Magdalene comforted by angels. You can also find a neoclassical temple by Cagnola. Among the trees, a remarkably twisted catalpa has an asymmetrical crown that gives it the character of a living sculpture.