The mother of all investigations into Milan’s urban planning. An instructive story

On 13 July 2022, the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office received a complaint lodged by Mr Gian Carlo Paghera against the construction, or renovation of an existing building – authorised for several years and already at an advanced stage – of a residential property in Piazza Aspromonte, known as ‘Hidden Garden’. The project was launched in 2017 and has been known and publicised since 2018; Mr Paghera – like other residents in the neighbouring area – is aware of it (he lives opposite the site; a technical inspection was carried out in his flat in 2019) but between 2018 and 2022, despite protests, complaints and attempts to put pressure on the developer via the local council and local politicians, no one ever considered lodging an administrative appeal, which would, in this case, be the appropriate legal remedy. Now, all of a sudden, a complaint has been lodged with the judicial authorities.

The first point – and this will be the first allegation listed in the forthcoming investigation – concerns a complaint of the incorrect application of the regulations on urban ‘courtyards’. This is how the Deputy Public Prosecutor of Milan, Marina Petruzzella, first steps into the courtyard.

It begins in this curious way, with a window onto the courtyard, a crucial and symbolic legal saga, because the case of Piazza Aspromonte is the first of countless investigations, all following the same pattern, into Milan’s town planning; many led by the now-retired former assistant Tiziana Siciliano, who was subsequently rumoured to be standing for election to the City Council on a populist ticket, and many conducted by Petruzzella herself, famous for her fiery verbal style, both in speech and in the record of proceedings: it was she who coined media-friendly phrases such as ‘diabolical slipstreams’.

This is not the first trial, however. The first to reach a verdict (at first instance) concerned the investigation into the Torre Stresa case, also led by Petruzzella, who delivered a flamboyant closing speech: ‘Enormous abuse’, defendants who ‘relied on impunity… with utter contempt’, ‘an aberrant property development’. The result: eight out of eight acquitted, and the grounds for the judgement, recently published, tear to shreds not only the unfounded allegations of criminal offences but also the very methods of the prosecution.

Now it is the mother of all investigations, “Hidden Garden” in Piazza Aspromonte, which is heading for trial: the preliminary hearing is scheduled for 25 September, at which Investigating Judge Maria Beatrice Parati will decide whether to dismiss the case (will the Torre Stresa precedent count?) or to commit Andrea Bezzicchieri, owner of BlueStone – the company that carried out the project – and other co-defendants for trial. The investigation began in 2022; four years have passed that have shaken Milan to its core.

It doesn’t happen, but if it does… as football fans say. No one can predict the outcome of the preliminary hearing on 25 September; the Torre Stresa case and the judges’ dismantling of the corruption theories could prove decisive. But the Italian judiciary is not based on common law; it is a kaleidoscope of legal interpretations.

The story of Aspromonte, however, is worth telling for several reasons. Because it is the root of all the investigations. Because it perfectly illustrates the way public prosecutors operate and a more general, punitive ideology that pervades Milan. For the gradual construction of a new criminal offence – the ‘attack on urban planning democracy’, as the mountain of investigations following the Ambrosian ritual came to be defined at one point. And for the bizarre ‘courtyard’ issue.

It is worth starting with the courtyard, the tenant’s window overlooking the courtyard, and the public prosecutor who, one day in 2022, looked out onto the courtyard and had a vision of a series of investigations that would be devastating (for Milan) and potentially endless. A model to be replicated had been found.

The building, dating from the 1960s and undergoing renovation, which had been purchased by Editrice Quadratum, originally comprised five storeys above ground, standing 16.14 metres high (the public prosecutor’s office claimed 12.24 metres); the renovation and reconstruction involved seven storeys above ground. Not exactly an ‘eyesore’, as was immediately claimed, having sprung up out of nowhere on a large green lawn, if one were to measure it properly. BlueStone had completed all the necessary paperwork and obtained a ‘building permit’ from the local council for the 25-metre-tall building. Other tenants, represented by lawyer Veronica Dini, joined the complaint. This is how the lawyers who regularly deal with property matters came to know Dini, who would subsequently become the point of reference for all appeals, complaints and committees investigating building regulations. On the basis of the complaint, on 14 October 2022 the public prosecutor’s office ordered the preventive seizure of the building site (preventive seizure is a hallmark of Milanese investigations: it has even led to the seizure of building sites that did not yet exist or had not yet been authorised). However, ten days later, on 24 October, the investigating judge did not agree with the charge based on the ‘urban planning courtyard’ and quashed the seizure. This was followed by a series of appeals and cross-appeals, until January 2024, when the Court of Cassation definitively rejected the precautionary seizure.

The issue of the ‘urban courtyard’ immediately highlights the complexity – and the uncertainty – of legal definitions and their application. In this respect, it is truly symbolic of the Milan case. The public prosecutor’s office, then as now, considers construction within a courtyard to be unauthorised. This stance persists despite the fact that the ‘building permit’ had been issued in 2019, following verification by the local authority, and that it complied with the provisions of the 2012 General Town Plan (PGT) in force at the time, as well as those of the new 2020 PGT, adopted in 2019. Furthermore, the local authority had already clarified the concept of a ‘courtyard’ as early as 2017.

So how do Public Prosecutor Petruzzella and the prosecution service go about proving that it is, in fact, a courtyard? An expert report is required. In fact, initially, it is sufficient to hear from a person with knowledge of the facts. The first person to be heard, in chronological order, is architect Patricio Eduardo Enriquez, on 28 September and 5 October 2022. Enriquez provides what he considers to be an unambiguous and incontrovertible definition of ‘courtyard’ (the definition of ‘urban planning courtyard’ has nothing to do with our common usage of the word; it is actually a technical legal term that is far from unambiguous). “It is, without a shadow of a doubt, a courtyard,” he states. However, a “genuine” expert is also required. Engineer Pietro Gianni is subsequently called in as a consultant and submits an initial technical report on 8 October 2022. It is on this basis that the public prosecutor’s office carries out the seizure which, as we have seen, the judges subsequently overturn. An incredible but instructive story.

Both of the public prosecutor’s consultants maintain that the area in Piazza Aspromonte is a courtyard. However, as will become clear, the judge hearing the appeal does not see it quite that way, partly on the basis that the expert reports submitted are not unsuitable. It is, of course, a legitimate and independent decision on the part of the public prosecutor leading the investigation, Ms Petruzzella, to appoint her own consultants. However, in light of the facts, it is also legitimate to ask why, of all the possibilities, Enriquez – the owner of a practice and, at times, a collaborator of lawyer Dini – was chosen. It turns out, in fact, that a year before being questioned as a ‘person with knowledge of the facts’, in March 2021, he had acted as a designer for a property just a few hundred metres from Piazza Aspromonte, characterised by similar town-planning issues: ‘Building replacement project for an internal section of a densely built-up block’. In short, a courtyard. Which Enriquez, however, considers legitimate. Is he a reliable expert? Fear not: Petruzzella chooses a genuine technical consultant, Engineer Pietro Gianni, who produces two expert reports.

It is regrettable that the Review Court, on 30 November 2022, in the order rejecting the seizure, wrote things that, if not serious, are at least astonishing and worth recounting, as they are indicative of a modus operandi. Regarding Enriquez, who declared ‘there is not a shadow of a doubt’ and levelled heavy criticism at the Landscape Commission that had granted approval, the Review Committee makes a number of observations. The judges write, with reference to the project “entirely analogous to that of BlueStone” on which the expert had worked, that in that case “Enriquez convincingly argued the opposite view to that put forward to the public prosecutor, namely that building within a block did not constitute building within a ‘courtyard’”. One particularly telling detail emerges: on that occasion Enriquez was not granted a ‘building permit’ – and this was precisely by members of the very same Landscape Commission that he heavily criticises in the BlueStone case – because that was indeed a courtyard. The judges are keen to clarify that the technical and legislative terms are highly complex, despite the newspapers already boldly running headlines such as ‘The “eco-monster” fiasco’. But above all: “The fact that, just a few months earlier, architect Enriquez had proposed to the municipal technical departments – in the interests of his own project – precisely that same interpretation of the term ‘internal courtyard’ which he has instead vehemently contested in the BlueStone case, undermines the credibility of his assessment on this matter… statements made, moreover, without any mention of his own professional ‘misadventure’ or the reasons that made him such an expert on the subject of ‘courtyards’ – reasons that might well have influenced him (out of rivalry towards the more successful competitor)”. As for the second consultant, Pietro Gianni, who had described the classification of the area as “undisputed” (“so evident and obvious that it is a courtyard’), the Review report states, however, that his CV “shows that his professional career has developed in the publishing and printing sector, which bears little relation to the subject matter of the proceedings”, raising the suspicion that he was not “even qualified” to deal with it. So why was he chosen? This is how the expert reports on the courtyard were put together. It could be argued, without exaggeration, that this was done in a manner that served the prosecution’s case. Fortunately for the prosecutors, the third expert called in, the architect Roberto Maccabruni – a specialist in the field – also supported the prosecution’s case in his report of 29 November 2022, stating that “it is a courtyard in every sense”. However, the application to seize the building site was, as mentioned, rejected.

However, it is here, with Maccabruni’s expert reports, that a quantum leap in investigative journalism takes place in 2023. The nature of the alleged offences changes. A seismic shift is about to occur, one that is now far broader in scope than a mere ‘A Window on the Courtyard’.

Let’s take things in order. Maccabruni’s first expert report also raises the issue of the breach of the required distances between windowed walls, a law dating from 1968. (Incidentally, it is curious that in the Torre Stresa judgement, an appeal by a private citizen on a related issue – ‘sunlight exposure’ – was flatly rejected: ‘In conclusion, it must be held that the development on Via Stresa complies with the distance requirements… with the consequence that the conditions regarding sunlight exposure must be deemed adequate’). However, the expert report does not yet make any comment on an aspect that would later prove crucial: the ‘breach of Article 41-quinquies, paragraph 6, of Law No. 1150/1942’ (yes, we have returned to the sole national law, dating back 84 years), namely the requirement for an ‘implementation plan’. Without this, as we have discovered in recent years, everything is swept away by the ‘diabolical SCIA’s’ – that is, the Certified Notification of Commencement of Activity, which has existed in various forms since the 1990s. A quantum leap in the investigations is on the horizon.

The breach of the ‘implementation plan’ in fact only appears in Maccabruni’s third legal opinion, dated 18 April 2023. It is the cornerstone of all future investigations: the absence of the implementation plan. Without it, everything else will amount to abuse and corruption. Today, prosecutors invoke that provision – Article 41-quinquies, paragraph 6, of Law No. 1150/194 – as an undisputed and widely accepted fact known to all, which ought certainly to have been complied with in the past as well. Yet this was not the case; builders and administrators legitimately operated in accordance with other regulations (in effect, a jungle of paperwork rather than concrete) right up until 2023. In essence, it took four expert reports and two years to identify the ‘ultimate weapon’ to be used in the investigations. How was this possible? After four years during which not a single appeal had been lodged with the Regional Administrative Court? It had not occurred to anyone – not only the operators or local councillors, but not even the prosecutors in the early stages of the investigations – that the rules normally applied constituted serious (corrupt) offences.

At this point, however, it is necessary to rewind a few years. The idea for developer Bezzicchieri to build “Hidden Garden” arose almost by chance in 2016, when an opportunity to purchase a property materialized. These were still the years when property development, backed by private investors and monitored but not hindered by the public authorities, was viewed without any initial suspicion. The rules do exist. Like any diligent entrepreneur, Bezzicchieri began with a ‘feasibility study’ and commissioned the architect Paolo Mazzoleni to draw up a ‘planimetric and volumetric scheme’. Based on a historical and urban planning analysis, Mazzoleni considers that the building is not situated within an ‘urban courtyard’; however, the matter must correctly be referred to the Landscape Commission, as the General Territorial Plan (PGT) provides for a specific procedure. In 2017, the Commission confirms that the site is not an ‘urban courtyard’. In 2019, more than 16 months after the application was submitted, the “building permit” was granted. This underscores that procedures in Milan have never involved collusive cliques, and that all statutory timeframes were respected.

So, are we ready to go? Not quite. There is another curious anecdote, which we recount only because it shows how, even at the end of the last decade, it was in fact a widespread climate of social strife and protest in the city that created the breeding ground for future legal upheavals; and how, at the same time, the political establishment – far from being in cahoots with the ‘speculators’ – was highly susceptible to the pressing, emerging climate of strife. The story. In the summer of 2019, shortly after receiving the go-ahead for the works, the designer Mazzoleni was contacted by Pierfrancesco Maran, then Councillor for Urban Planning: he was receiving urgent complaints from some residents of Piazza Aspromonte – not exactly the future ‘suspended families’ who would later fall victim to the evictions. He proposed an informal, conciliatory meeting between the tenants and BlueStone in his office. This was rather unusual. But it could only serve to confirm to the protesters that the ‘building permit’ was in order. They were not satisfied; the pressure continued; and following discussions and appeals from the councillor, BlueStone agreed to a settlement (the ‘villas amendment’) to modify certain aspects of the project. The agreement is countersigned, Maran gives his blessing to the irregular procedure, and finally, in May 2021, the new plan with the amendment is approved. The ‘villas’ committee steps down, but other stakeholders are ready to step in. Those who will go straight to the public prosecutor’s office. It is a mechanism that we might describe as ‘pre-legal’, yet – starting with the ‘Hidden Garden’ inquiry – it will in many cases prove decisive for the future of urban planning in Milan. Spontaneous committees, more or less coordinated pressure groups with access to social media, the complicit sympathy of the press, and individual citizens appealing to the public prosecutor’s office or the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) become the public prosecutor’s natural allies.

How is it that when the story about the courtyard turns out to be flimsy, the rest falls apart? Why – despite all the valid permits – did no one between 2016 and 2022 find any offence serious enough to take the matter to the Regional Administrative Court? The answer lies in the public prosecutor’s own documents: it doesn’t occur to anyone because there are no grounds for it. So much so that, at the outset and for almost two years, Public Prosecutor Petruzzella simply observed the courtyard from her window.

It remains to be seen what the judges will decide in a few days’ time regarding whether or not this case will go to trial, and what the court may subsequently rule. But in the meantime, the investigation that began in a courtyard had changed its tone and direction.

Because in the meantime, between the first seizure of 2022 and the identification of the specific offence that will underpin all the investigations in 2023, the atmosphere in Milan has changed. It has become poisoned. Copy-and-paste investigations are popping up left, right and centre – everyone faces charges of abuse of office and fraud for using the term ‘renovation’ to refer to new builds (Il Foglio has repeatedly clarified that this is one of the most contradictory and inapplicable definitions in building legislation), along with a preventive seizure. Committees are springing up; the informal network stretching from lawyer Dini to journalists who have always been hostile to the Sala administration, to bloggers and the authors of pamphlets denouncing urban planning malpractice, is shaping the new climate. People are even ready to applaud the work of the public prosecutors in the town squares. The story is well known. The administration under attack backs down, whilst the populist left sees a way to restore its reputation by distancing itself from its past administrative record. The populist right, without much foresight, hopes to bring the whole thing crashing down thanks to the activism of Marcello Viola’s public prosecutor’s office.

Prosecutor Petruzzella has left the courtyard. Obviously not alone: for a long time, the case has been in the hands of Deputy Prosecutor Siciliano, who works with a stable and cohesive team. She has taken charge of other high-profile investigations, such as Torre Stresa (the outcome of which we know). The ‘Pirellino’ investigation, ‘Papiniano 48’, and the Torre Unico-Brera construction site on Via Anfiteatro (a paradoxical tale of seizures in open contradiction even to administrative rulings). And the major operation into the alleged ‘corruption scheme’ in July 2025, with requests for the arrest of high-profile figures that even touched upon the mayor, only to be literally torn to shreds by the Court of Appeal and the Court of Cassation. This is not about compiling a list of achievements; it is simply to highlight how all these legal proceedings are interconnected.

Meanwhile, Andrea Bezzicchieri has even ended up in prison, though in connection with a different investigation – namely, that into the ‘corruption scheme’ concerning the alleged bribery of architect Alessandro Scandurra, a former member of the Landscape Commission. This charge resulted in a few weeks of unnecessary detention for the builder, who was in fact immediately released following a review hearing. The outcome of the investigation was its dismissal by the appeal judges and the Court of Cassation: “Lack of serious evidence”, “a demeaning oversimplification of the argument”. Those were the dark days of summer 2025, when the prosecution’s corruption theories began to falter and the prosecutors tried to raise the stakes by targeting the upper echelons of politics.

Last July, the case reached the preliminary hearing, with a request for a trial. The charges included forgery, unauthorised land subdivision and corruption against 26 people, including the former chairman of the Landscape Commission, Giuseppe Marinoni, and the former deputy chairman, Giovanni Oggioni. In his closing speech, Petruzzella, in his usual combative tone, spoke of “glaring falsehoods” that had led to the construction of “abnormal volumes”. On the broader issue, he lashed out against the supposed ‘good faith of public and private operators’ in a country that ‘has enormous problems with town planning and the law’ and where there is a lack of ‘widespread awareness of the enormous damage’ caused.

But in the meantime, something else, something different, has happened in Milan. Beyond the deflation of the theories of ‘grand corruption’ that were said to have enveloped Milan for years within a ‘system’. Last June, the first-instance verdict on the Torre Stresa case was handed down: eight full acquittals out of eight: ‘For all defendants, the subjective element of the offence is lacking, whether intentional or negligent’. Last week, the grounds for the judgement were published, and they are, to say the least, devastating both in terms of the content of the investigations and the alleged offences – which were, in fact, carbon copies of other cases – and in terms of the very working methods of the prosecution team. First and foremost, and a key issue, is the question of the interpretation of laws and regulations: “This trial has centred primarily on a comparison of different interpretations of urban planning and building regulations at national, regional and municipal levels, in order to verify the procedure followed by officials of the Municipality of Milan”. “It has not been proven that the prosecution’s case was based on the premise that, in order to obtain approval for the building project in question and secure the necessary planning permissions… there was an unlawful agreement between developers and officials, aimed at finding ‘convenient’ and incorrect interpretations of the regulations, conferring a ‘pretence of legitimacy’ and causing ‘astonishing distortions’ of the law”. And further: “No evidence has been presented to support the theory of a conspiracy or a possible criminal agreement between the business operators, professionals and municipal officials – as the Public Prosecutor’s Office has doggedly maintained – to obtain an unlawful planning permission to carry out the planned building works”. ‘Vehemently’: the judges have chosen the perfect adverb to describe the obstinacy – and the prejudiced attitude towards builders and administrators – with which the Milan public prosecutors have, over the course of four years now, built their case of accusation.

At this point, it remains unclear how the situation will evolve (it may not materialise, but if it does…). Out of respect for the facts and the roles involved, it is not for a newspaper to determine who is in the right between the defence and the prosecution. We do, however, know a few things that should be borne in mind. At least in an honest public debate, which Milan sorely needs in an election year. First and foremost, the subject of town planning and building regulations is extremely complicated and contradictory. From Law No. 1150/1942 – which remains the main national town planning law, albeit amended several times – right through to Milan’s 2020 Territorial Management Plan, not to mention regulations and circulars, there are at least twenty provisions that have been utilised, invoked and pitted against one another in each of the Milanese investigations. Starting with the very concept of ‘building renovation’, on which there are even conflicting rulings by the Council of State. What is clear, at the end of this complex and at times absurd journey through the Piazza Aspromonte case, is that this is an investigation born of questionable motives – the opposition of private individuals to a building project that complied with all the rules – and transformed over time into a series of alleged offences that have had, and still have, a much broader and markedly different judicial scope and political fallout. Allegations of criminal offences have become intertwined and accumulated, and have in the meantime become clichés in public debate (speculators, corruption, housing shortages attributed solely to property developers and not, for example, to a decade-long lack of planning and political decision-making). A judicial initiative conducted in a ‘combative’ manner on contradictory premises has helped to create a negative climate, starting with the indictment of public officials and businesspeople, which the court rulings may now disprove. If laws need to be changed – whether because they are contradictory or simply because they have been rendered obsolete by the passage of time and new requirements – they should be amended through the appropriate channels. Anything else creates distorting mechanisms that affect everyone, and Milan in particular. A ‘window on the courtyard’ cannot be the sole vantage point from which to view a metropolis. Nor, indeed, can the bench of a court.