The Milan Stock Exchange: locations and historical events
The Milan Stock Exchange: locations and historical events
Monte di Pietà
The first seat of operations of the Milan Merchandise Exchange in February 1808 was in three rooms inside the Monte di Pietà, the public pawnbroking establishment on the street of the same name. These premises had been located by a commission of fifteen Milan merchants who had been charged with the task by the Minister of the Interior in January. In its final report, however, the commission emphasised that the rooms were unsuitable and that they had been chosen primarily in view of the impending opening rather than for their functionality. It also suggested that the permanent seat be located in Palazzo dei Giureconsulti.
Palazzo ai Giureconsulti
The second seat had the advantage of being centrally located in what for centuries had been the traditional meeting place of the Milan merchants. The proposal was taken up and the Hearing Room of the Court of Appeals on the first floor of the building was adapted to house the Exchange sessions starting in September 1809.
During the first decades of its founding, the Exchange was not particularly active, to such an extent that in 1825 the Municipal Assembly requested that the rooms be used for the elementary school in Piazza Mercanti.
During the 1850s, trading picked up briskly and it became urgent to provide the Exchange with larger quarters: the solution that architect Enrico Terzaghi came up with was to close the portico facing the Exchange rooms by glassing them in. Between 1887 and 1890, during the renovation works on the building, the Exchange sessions were held in the foyer of the La Scala Theatre.
Palazzo Broggi
The strong growth market at the end of the 19th century gave rise to space problems and led for the first time to the idea of constructing a building specifically for the seat of the Stock Exchange. The place that was chosen was Piazza Ellittica (today, Cordusio) and Luigi Broggi, who had already built part of the square along with Luca Beltrami, was charged with the project. The building, perfectly integrated into the urban fabric with its slightly concave facade, housed the sessions of the Exchange in a large hall on the ground floor. When it was solemnly inaugurated in 1901, the logistics problems were thought to have been solved forever.
This view proved to be overly optimistic by the end of the 1920s, when the Chamber of Commerce began to study new solutions.
Palazzo Mezzanotte
In 1928, the Chamber of Commerce entrusted architect Paolo Mezzanotte with designing the new Exchange building. The idea was to unite the Stock Exchange facilities into a single building with those of the other Exchanges (silk, cocoons, grain) that did not have their own seat at Palazzo Broggi in Piazza Cordusio.