I Visconti di Modrone. Nobiltà e modernità a Milano (secoli XIX-XX)

[Autom. eng. transl.] Among the ancient families of Milan, the Visconti di Modrone are probably the family that with greater conviction and success has been able to interpret the needs of renewal of the patriciate and its will to remain a ruling class even in the age of revolutions. Starting from the vast documentation preserved in the family's archive, the studies collected in the volume illuminate times and forms of the participation of noble elites in the modernization of the economy and of Lombard society, in a protagonism that compensated for the reduction of political power. The analysis of the behaviors and choices of the Visconti di Modrone highlights the diversification of investments, the opening to industry and finance and the development of entrepreneurial roles without neglecting the active management of the vast land and real estate assets, together with the most traditional strategies for the conservation of the lineage at the time of marriage alliances and hereditary successions. This allowed the dukes and their kinsmen to reach the heights of Milanese private wealth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and to acquire a growing public visibility, legitimized also by the assumption of new roles and social responsibilities.