The Iron Railing of the Public Gardens in Milan.

Cancellata dei Giardini Pubblici, G. Piermarini

People usually walk along Corso Venezia in Milan paying little attention to the elegant palaces that line this central street connecting Porta Venezia to Piazza San Babila. They show the same distracted attitude when passing in front of the railing of the Public Gardens along the same street, probably ignoring the great sensation that their introduction caused in 1787. 

I'm talking about the iron railings. In a town where gardens were usually hidden behind high enclosure walls and streets were unpaved and dusty, the use of railings opened unexpected perspectives: people strolling along the shady paths could look out and enjoy the traffic of carriages and fashionable crowd in the street, and vice versa. Railings delimited the space of the Gardens without isolating them, making them part of the town, part of an urban landscape that the Austrian administration, following the example of the biggest and the most advanced European towns, wanted to make more and more salubrious, functional and tidy. Roads were widened and paved, manholes and sewers installed and the traffic of carriages regulated while the creation of new libraries, theatres, schools and cemeteries changed the look of Milan.

L'ora del riposo durante i lavori dell'Esposizione del 1881, F. Carcano.

The area selected for the Gardens was in the northeast of the town, inside the Old Bastions, divided among cultivated fields and vegetables gardens watered by channels, factories and properties of religious institutions. Porta Orientale, today Porta Venezia, one of the streets that bounded the Gardens, was already a popular meeting place, where nobles loved to indulge in carriage rides enjoying the healthy air and the beautiful view over the plain and the distant mountains. Works to create the Gardens began around 1783 with the unification of two religious properties suppressed by the Austrian government: the monastery of San Dionigi and the convent of Santa Maria Addolorata, the so-called Carcanine nuns.
Giuseppe Piermarini (1734-1808), the Italian architect in charge of the works, provided the innovative design for the Gardens and for the new gates. He conceived light iron railings, decorated with armorial bearings and pointed tips, supported by granite pillars topped by simple, formal vases and urns. The result was a well proportioned ensemble, airy but solid, a pleasant view rich of symbolic messages for the cultivated eye. Pointed tips protected the Gardens, granting their safety without scaring, while urns and vases recalled the classical antiquity. Placed at the entrance gates, urns, large covered vases, evoked the idea of the Gardens as sacred place whose precious content had to be preserved, emphasizing the importance attached to them. Vases overflowing with flowers, instead, were arranged on the lower pillars along the railing, suggesting the idea of a permanent reserve of life, of richness and beauty. 

The Gardens, completed by September 1786, were further developed and enlarged in the subsequent years, but the iron railings remained unchanged. Simple and elegant, and today too easily neglected.

Veduta de Giardini Pubblici con Monumenti eretti per la festa del 3 giugno, A. Appiani.

Photos:
TravelinaGarden, Milan, June 2013.

L’ora del riposo durante i lavori dell’Esposizione del 1881, Carcano Filippo, 1881, oil on canvas, Milano, Galleria d’Arte Moderna. [The hour of rest during the works of the Exhibition of 1881]
http://filippocarcano.com

“Veduta de Giardini Pubblici con Monumenti eretti per la festa del 3 giugno. Giugno 1804 An. III°, 1804”, 1804, Milano, Appiani Andrea, Raccolta Beretta E 2, tav. 412, Castello Sforzesco. Catalogo descrittivo, Milano 1932, p. 160 n. 2138, Civica Storica delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli.
http://milanosenzaspazi.wikispaces.com

Further reading:
Il nuovo giardino di Milano, F. Zanetti, Tipografia Zanetti, Milano 1869.
Il giardino a Milano, per pochi e per tutti, 1288-1945, V. Vercelloni, L’Archivolto 1986.
La storia del paesaggio urbano di Milano, V. Vercelloni, Officina d'arte grafica Lucini, Milano 1988.