Forme di sociabilità impegnata. Feste, balli e cerimonie nella Società del Giardino dalla Restaurazione all’Unità d’Italia

It was precisely starting from the Habsburg age that the Società del Giardino began to take deep roots in the city fabric and in the history of Milan and one of its main strengths was the active participation of its members in its life which was exemplified in the organization of an intense social life. Parties, lunches, academies together with games were the main purposes of the Club and represented opportunities for all members to meet, form friendships and family ties, exchange professional skills and contribute to building a part of the city's history. These social events certainly became functional to the construction of networks of economic, political and social relationships, but they also represented spaces for artistic and technological experimentation, thanks to that class of shopkeepers, entrepreneurs and professionals, often men of great culture, who were always the soul of the Società del Giardino, favoring the development of a modern public opinion which was then the main substratum of nineteenth-twentieth century Milanese liberal society.