Ziani entered the seventeenth-century palazzo that was the Ambrosian from piazza San Sepolcro, which ─ in Roman times ─ had been the city forum, its name taken from that of the Roman church.
The façade looks like a portico derived from classical forms, punctuated by four Ionic pillars surmounted by a tympanum bearing the coat of arms of the Borromeo dynasty within: above the pillars lay the inscription Biblioteca Ambrogiana. Flanking the portico was the stone statue of Cardinal Federico Borromeo, founder and patron of the Ambrosian Library.
The interior unravelled from the atrium onto piazza San Sepolcro up to the hall of the painters’ academy (now the sala Fagnani) and that of the sculptors’ academy (now the sala Custodi) through the Federiciana hall and the colonnaded courtyard.
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