The 23-metre balloon that took flight here

An invited crowd gathered at the Villa Sormani in 1784 to witness the first public hot air balloon flight on Italian soil. Paolo Andreani funded the Gerli brothers to build a 23-metre wide balloon, and they launched it from the grounds on 13 March.

Andreani and two assistants ascended over 1,500 metres into the air. It was a massive spectacle - the Emperor even commissioned a medal to commemorate the flight because he could not be there to see it himself.

Before the balloon, there was the villa itself. Built in 1733 for Count Charles Joseph Bolagnos, it has passed through the hands of the Andreani, Sormani, and Verri families. Today, the interior is subdivided into separate residences, but the Baroque facade and the wide stairway leading to the garden pillars remain.

Then there is the church in the grounds. It did not start here. The Andreani family actually had it dismantled from a convent in Lugano, Switzerland. It took seventeen years of transport via wagons and a canal to move the pieces to Brugherio, where it was rebuilt and re-dedicated in 1832.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons