The Great and Perfect Building

“The whole fabric, in its circuit of porticos, corridors, rooms, is symmetrical, perfect and very imposing”: thus did architect Giovanni Muzio define the monastery of Sant’Ambrogio in 1932 when he was completing its transformation and extension so as to make it into the new seat for the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, founded eleven years earlier by Father Agostino Gemelli.

The history of this monumental area, raised to the memory of the patron saint of the Milanese Church and still today the lively cradle of an uninterrupted tradition, was described for the first time in 1990 in the volume Dal monastero di S. Ambrogio all’Università Cattolica, edited by Maria Luisa Gatti Perer. Studies, solidly based on the foundations of that publication, immediately revived, and in these twenty years they have attained such depth and novelty as to encourage the publication of a new book, to describe once more, with greater richness of data and considerations, the historical-artistic evolution of this extraordinary place, of whose importance there is an ever greater awareness.