Portaluppi Churchyard - Milan Cathedral Square

Floor slabs made of LASA BIANCO® for the forecourt of the third largest church in the world

The "Sagrato del Duomo", the square in front of Milan Cathedral, was redesigned as early as 1926-1929. It was the architect Piero Portaluppi (*1888 - †1967) - one of Milan's most famous architects and urban designers in the first half of the 20th century - who created the template for the paving of the square with granite and marble with his geometric patterns specially devised for the parvis of Milan Cathedral. In 1996 and 1997, the cathedral square was completely renewed on the basis of the existing design. For all the white floor elements of the patterns designed by Portaluppi, Lasa Marmo supplied the corresponding laying elements and floor slabs.

Milan Cathedral (construction began in 1386 and took about 600 years) is the third largest church in the world after St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican and Seville Cathedral. Stretching from the western edge of the square to the façade of the cathedral is the "Sagrato del Duomo", the cathedral square, with architect, Piero Portaluppi's stone and marble paving design from 1929. Portaluppi's design aimed, by means of a special arrangement of geometric patterns, to also give the Cathedral Square the splendid effect that the Milan Cathedral has with its unique neo-Gothic style façade, completed in 1813, surrounded by magnificent buildings such as the Palazzo Reale and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. In 1996, Milan's city council decided to completely renovate the cathedral square according to Portaluppi's design. As a replacement for the white marble used up to then, they were looking for a stone that was characterised by particular hardness (resistance to stress) and resistance to heat and cold. The Milan-based "Cooperativa Selciatori e Posatori Strade e Cave a r.l." (Consortium Company of Paving Stone and Floor Layers), a company with a long tradition, was commissioned with the laying work and already had very good experience with floor slabs made of LASA marble in Busto Arsizio, a mid-sized city of just over 80,000 inhabitants in the Lombard province of Varese, from 1991 to 1993. In order to dispel the last doubts about the suitability, the client, the "Direzione Lavori Metropolitana Milanese S.p.A", had various samples in LASA BIANCO^® provided by Lasa Marmo tested in 1997 by the Milan testing institute "Studio Sperimentale Stradale" especially for the project for porosity, abrasion resistance, pressure resistance and frost resistance. The material test was carried out in accordance with the requirements of Royal Decrees No. 2232 and 2234 of 16/11/1939 and certified that the sample pieces of LASA marble - taking into account the expected loads from vehicles and millions of visitors - had excellent properties. As a result, nothing stood in the way of laying the laying elements and floor slabs produced in the Lasa Marmo factory in accordance with the Milan planning specifications.