Casa dei Grifi

Casa dei Grifi stands on Via Valpetrosa in the heart of Milan, with a Renaissance courtyard behind its historic façade. Construction began at the end of the fifteenth century and finished during the sixteenth, shaping a post-Bramantesque building once occupied by the Grifi merchant family. Leonardo Grifi served as an archbishop and poet, while his brother Ambrogio worked as Ludovico il Moro’s court physician.

The rectangular courtyard preserves a ground-floor portico with terracotta arches and granite columns topped by composite capitals. Milanese railing walkways line the upper floors, while ribbed vaults carry monochrome decorations on blue backgrounds, including scratched grotesques. In the nineteenth century, the Albergo Gran Parigi operated here as a terminus for stagecoaches travelling to Pavia.

Limestone capitals repeat a rampant gryphon inside horse-head shields, giving the courtyard its most distinctive motif. Stone roundels between the arches show profiles of emperors and figures from antiquity, while full-round heads occupy the corners.