…which is located at Via Palatino 16 in northwest Milan. I taxied over there as soon as soon as I hit town around 2:30 pm. I dropped off the suitcase and scooted on over.
The house seems much larger in actuality than it does in this 1968 spiritual transcendence film. Plus the front facade has been torn up and re-windowed or whatever. Very little reverence for the past.
Terrence Stamp “does” every member of an upper-class Milanese family (Silvano Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Anne Wiazemsky, that freckly red-haired kid), and, having touched divinity or something that feels holy, they all become unhinged in this or that way. All except Laura Betti’s maid, who transforms into a kind of levitating Madonna.
Anyway the house is largely blocked from view, and you can’t see the backyard at all. But I was there, dammit. I smelled it, felt it. My hands touched the iron gate.
