Every design for Desio

Desio is the town that gave the world Pope Pius XI. Achille Ratti was born here, the road sign at the edge of town still says so, and his family house on the street now named after him opens to visitors on Sundays; the hospital took his name as well. Centuries earlier, in 1277, Desio was where the Visconti defeated the della Torre family and won the lordship of Milan, in a battle fought around the tower beside the town's basilica.

For people from Desio the place feels like the Brianza at its most familiar: an afternoon in the Parco Tittoni behind the eighteenth-century Villa Tittoni-Traversi, the Torre del Palagi, the station with its trains to Milan, and youth football at the weekend. The name is said to come from ad decimum, the tenth Roman mile out of Milan on the road to Como, and the town has kept that in-between character, near enough to the city and still its own place. Members of Italy's rhythmic gymnastics team live and train here.

Coming back up the old road from Milan, it is the tower and the green of the villa's park that tell you you have arrived.