Editor’s Note
**Editor’s Note:** This article examines the transformation of the former Hotel Pasteur, once a notorious hub of crime and decay in Milan, as it prepares to serve as the set for a TV film about a local murder case.
Milan, January 28, 2020 – Perhaps this time we can truly speak in the past tense. This must be the right moment because the Hotel Pasteur, once the “infamous pillar” of Manzoni’s memory, a former symbol of extreme decay in an already difficult neighborhood—a refuge for the desperate, a place of drug dealing and robberies—is on the verge of a turnaround. In a few days, it will become the set of a TV film about the very Milanese story of the murder of Pierluigi Torregiani, which took place on February 16, 1979, during the Years of Lead. Torregiani, a goldsmith in Bovisa, was killed in an ambush by the “Proletari Armati per il Comunismo” (Armed Proletarians for Communism). The Rai film will retell this story, featuring actor Luca Montanari.
After filming, a few months later, the hotel and the adjoining jewelry store will reopen to the public, providing the long-needed boost for the definitive redevelopment of that slice of NoLo, located between via dei Transiti, via Guinizelli, and via Temperanza. Years of reports, protests over the lack of security, demanded through official complaints and torchlight processions, and the hotel renovations have started and are nearly complete.
The hotel is owned by a Lebanese architect, Oliver Thomas Massabni, who has a studio in Vienna. He reportedly purchased the entire building and also a part of the Gold Market, the historic store that closed in 2017.
The gold store will be smaller, a boutique with three display windows. And this is the link with the TV series, because the former Gold Market is the only jewelry store in Milan that has preserved the furnishings and appeal of the 1970s, authentic and therefore perfect for setting the film. The historic counters from those years, the floors, and the 1970s chandeliers will be maintained. Thus, in a vintage version, it will reopen to the public, at least in part of its ten display windows.
The rebirth of the “Hotel Pasteur” will definitively change the face of a part of the city that is already buzzing, very central, and undergoing a carefully planned redevelopment by the urban planning councilor Pierfrancesco Maran, also through the recent “reinventing city” project, which places the nearby Piazzale Loreto, Via Padova, and Viale Monza at the center of Milan’s future.