Casa Turati Kuliscioff
From 1891 to 1926 home of the editors of the magazine “Critica Sociale” and vital center for socialism and Milan’s first antifascism.
In Corso Vittorio Emanuele, under the porticos, close to number 23, right next to the Duomo are two plates, one made of bronze dated 1987 and the other made of marble dated 1948, commemorating the apartment on the fourth floor where Filippo Turati and Anna Kiluscioff lived and, from 1892 to 1925, used as a reference center for socialism first, and the first antifascism later. It was the headquarter of the magazine “Critica sociale”, its rooms saw the passage of almost every main figure of those years’ progressive culture: names ranging from Gaetano Salvemini to Claudio Treves, from Giacomo Matteotti to Carlo Rosselli, from Angelica Balabanoff to Romolo Murri.
Those who’ve seen it remember its large and luminous hall with a view on the Duomo’s spires, its two desks, its little green sofa and a little three-legged square coffee table with inlays on top constantly covered with books and magazines.
Other regulars of the place were the keeper Maria Milanesi, the young collaborators Treves, Ettore Albini, Mario Borsa, and the famous doctor Paolo Pini.
Here is where on 8th May 1898 Anna Kuliscioff and Filippo Turati were arrested for plotting against the State, with Turati being imprisoned for an entire year.
They later resumed their activities until Kuliscioff’s death on 29th December 1925 and Turati’s escape to France on 21st November 1926, leaving behind papers, books and everything else in his apartment in Milan.
Turati died in exile in Paris in 1932, his ashes have been brought back to Milan together with Claudio Treves’ ones on 10th October 1948 and interred with Kuliscioff’s at the Cimitero Monumentale.
The original epigraph on the marble plate was dictated by Alessandro Schiavi, student of Antonio Labriola, Turati’s friend and biographer: «In this house | from 1892 to 1925 | two lives intertwined | Filippo Turati and Anna Kuliscioff | they illuminated workers | with the light and comfort | of faith in socialism | October 1948».
Massimo Castoldi