Giuseppe Mengoni

Giuseppe Mengoni ( born November 2, 1829 in Fontanelice, † December 30, 1877 Milan ) was an Italian engineer and architect of historicism. His main work was the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in the Piazza del Duomo in Milan.

Life

Mengoni attended high school in Imola and studied from 1847 in Bologna mathematical physics. In 1848 he took part as a volunteer of the uprising against the Austrians in the battles at Vicenza and Venice. 1849-1850 he worked the stage designer Francesco Cocchi and won a prize for his painting of the Courland ruins of an old cathedral. In July 1851 Mengoni graduated as an engineer with a work on optics and started to work as assistant to the railway engineer Jean Louis Protche, but at the same time studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna. From 1859 onwards Mengoni was involved in the redesign of the Milan cathedral square. He sat with his project against 175 competitors, and was also involved in the financing of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

However Mengoni worked not only in Milan. He built, among others, the City Council of Castel Bolognese, the Palazzo Municipale of Malalbergo ( destroyed in 1945 ), in Bologna Palazzo della Cassa de Risparmio (main building of the Savings Bank ) ( 1868/1871 ) and worked on numerous other projects

On January 10, 1872 married Mengoni Carlotta Bossi de Capitani, the couple moved into one of the representative apartments on the north side of the Piazza del Duomo in Milan.

Giuseppe Mengoni died on December 30, 1877. He fell off the scaffolding of the Galleria. His memory is dedicated in his hometown, including a small museum archive.