The Church of St Francis of Paola, dedicated to the 15th-century Italian mendicant friar and founder of the Order of Minims, stands like a forgotten hidden relic amidst the glory of today's frenetic consumerism. In fact, the modern shrine called Armani Manzoni 31, dominating the street in front of the church, makes the old Christian values of purity, simplicity and sacrifice seem rather antiquated.
Commissioned by the Order of Minims, the church was constructed in the first half of the 18th century by architect Marco Antonio Bianchi next to a convent that had stood on the spot since the 16th century. Throughout the second half of the 1700s the church's interior was further embellished and the current façade was completed in 1891 by Emilio Alemagna. The curved façade, with its two orders and eight low-relief vertical pillars known as lesene, echo the style of Italy's greatest Baroque architect, Francesco Borromini, who worked in Rome in the 17th century.
Inside, the church presents a rectangular singular nave with rounded off angles. There are two chapels on each side and the ceiling contains an impressive fresco painted by Carlo Maria Giudici, The Glory of St Francis of Paola. The sumptuous polychromatic high altar in the presbytery was built by Giuseppe Buzzi in 1753. The Church of St Francis of Paola is not one of Milan's most important churches, but it is no less beautiful, and its location in the center of the city's shopping district gives it the aspect of an exotic oddity.