Casa Girola

Casa Girola stands at Via Broletto 5 in Milan, presenting a historic building shaped by twentieth-century architectural change. Its street-facing façade rises in three distinct horizontal sections.

The Girola construction company built the headquarters in the late 1890s, before Piero Portaluppi redesigned it in 1932. His intervention gave the exterior a more severe, monumental character. Dark stone forms the lower section, where a balcony marks the main floor. Lighter stone frames the middle section with simple moulding around the balcony door, while a ribbon window spans the upper floor. These contrasting materials and clean lines show Portaluppi moving away from the decorative language of his earlier work.

Inside, an austere entrance hall continues the building’s grand architectural character through its mosaic flooring. The patterned surface echoes the decorative ideas carried by the façade. A later restoration preserved the structure while renewing its historic presence. The contrast between dark stone below and the continuous upper window remains its most memorable detail.