Architecture
Casa Cattaneo-Alchieri
Look up: one apartment block is doing its best impression of a pile of private villas. Pietro Lingeri built the illusion with projecting terraces—then returned in the 1950s and disrupted his own skyline.
Why it is worth the detour
Pietro Lingeri designed this apartment block as a stack of individual “superimposed villas,” with projecting terraces serving as outdoor rooms. A rooftop addition by Lingeri himself later altered part of his original Rationalist silhouette.
Casa Cattaneo-Alchieri is a hidden gem in Como, known for its unique Rationalist architecture by Pietro Lingeri. The building features terraces that serve as outdoor rooms, offering a distinctive architectural experience.
The people behind this address
Documented connections, not celebrity trivia.
Pietro Lingeri
Lingeri designed the apartment building for his relatives, the Cattaneo and Alchieri families, and later designed its rooftop addition.
What else is close by
The nearest places we have written up, with straight-line distance from here.
250 m
Casa Pedraglio
Mid-construction, Casa Pedraglio lost two structural bays. The apartment house carried on anyway, leaving Terragni’s composition with architecture’s equivalent of deleted paragraphs still showing.
300 m
Via Anzani Workers’ Housing
On paper, this was a whole new district. Then the budget cuts arrived, and an entire neighbourhood shrank to two apartment blocks.
450 m
Como Silk Museum
On Via Castelnuovo, the hunt comes down to one small detail: number 9. Find it, and silk gets the whole museum to itself.
450 m
Former Giovanni Bianchi Silk Workshop
Chiffon runs down an absurdly long table while looms clatter nearby. At Via Milano 26, Giovanni Bianchi built a silk business around handwork—before the family moved beyond Como and technology changed the plot.
450 m
Paolo Carcano Silk Institute
Lake Como gets the postcards; this campus tells the story behind the silk. Here, fashion meant chemistry, weaving and homework long before it meant a polished shop window.
500 m
Former Ticosa Silk-Printing Works and Santarella Power House
Como’s luxury silk has an awkward backstage: workers, chemicals, heavy industry—and, here, an enormous gap where most of the factory has disappeared.
Walk it with the stories
This address is one stop among many. Our routes and quests link them into a walk that makes sense on the ground.