Hospital of St. Clement in Geno

(12th century)

viale Geno, 12

The origins of St. Clement’s have probably to be attributed to the venture of a group of Humiliati who, by the end of 12th century, set up in a church built much earlier. In 1516 the hospital buildings were given up to the city community in order to be assigned as a nursing home for those who had been infected with plague, and effectively used as a lazzaretto (leper hospital) especially during the terrible plague in 1630. After being acquired by the Milanese family of Della Porta, the complex was joined again to St. Anne’s and then in 1790 bought by the marchioness Menafoglio Ghilini who wanted to turn it into her residence; before the works’ end the buildings were given up again to the marquis Carlo Cristoforo Cornaggia Medici, who ended up their renovation. The block of buildings was finally demolished in 1851 by Giovanni Cornaggia Medici, who entrusted the project of the current villa to the architect Giacomo Tazzini.

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Main photo. Lombard painter, St. Roch curing Plague Victims, 17th century (Como, St. Ursula’s church)

Below. Como, Villa Geno, 19th century