our Story
This historic shop, recognized for many years now as a “Bottega Storica”, was founded in 1881 by Francesco Pettinaroli, when he moved from Lake Orta to Milan.
It immediately opened as a stationery shop with an adjoining printing and bookbinding workshop, and in a short time it became known among the Milanese, who were living through a period of intense industrial development and were perhaps looking for just such a shop in industrious Milan, right next to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele—the city’s modern and monumental “drawing room,” completed definitively only four years earlier.
Fine papers, meticulous and elegant craftsmanship, and high-class stationery items won over the Milanese who, from then on and throughout the following 144 years of activity, have never abandoned Pettinaroli,
entrusting it with the printing of all their most important events: births, communions, weddings. Here they created invitations, personal and business stationery, and business cards of every kind, produced with the most refined printing techniques.
In 1883, two years after its founding, the shop moved from Via San Raffaele to Via Santa Radegonda.
The shop remained here until 1959, when it moved to its nearby location in Piazza San Fedele at the corner of Via Marino, without losing sight of what is the symbol of Milan: the highest spire of the Cathedral with its Madonnina, hence: “for more than a hundred years in the shadow of the Madonnina.” With the Duomo on one side and the temple of opera on the other, the shop accompanied step by step the triumphs of La Scala: in 1887 Giuseppe Verdi once again amazed the world with the premiere of Otello; in the orchestra played a then very young cellist, Arturo Toscanini, while Giacomo Puccini, already for some years a Milan resident, was preparing to experience his first triumphs at La Scala.
2017 marked a new and renewed chapter for the historic shop, which, with no small measure of melancholy, had to move away from the shadow of the Cathedral.
It settled, however, without too many regrets, in the artistic heart of the city, just a few hundred meters away, in elegant Via Brera, the axis of a culturally vibrant neighborhood where the Pinacoteca, the Braidense Library, and the Academy of Fine Arts are home to artists and intellectuals. In this way, Pettinaroli once again reaffirmed its commitment to highlighting its artistic and artisanal tradition.
We have now reached the fourth generation, and the fact that the shop has always remained in the family has ensured that it has never lost its true character:
Each generation has added its own touch while continuing the work of the previous one and nurturing personal passions. Some delved deeper into the field of typography, others sought out skilled artisans to create exclusive items, still others discovered small yet refined paper mills, and finally there were those who developed a taste and passion for antique prints. Maps of every part of the world, city views, and the “jewel” of mountain prints have made our shop an important point of reference for all enthusiasts of this fascinating field. Francesco has long since become one of the leading experts at the national level, actively participating in specialized exhibitions throughout Europe. A constant priority over all these years has always been the research, production, and sale of fine items exclusively Made in Italy, and the promotion of Italian artisanal tradition—something of which we are particularly proud.
Today it is Francesco who, supported by specialized and knowledgeable staff and by his daughter Elena, carries the business forward, always with the enthusiasm that has distinguished this shop for 140 years.
