City of Health and Research, Milan

The construction of a large hospital complex on the site of the former Falck steelworks, in the municipality of Sesto San Giovanni, just outside Milan, will create the “City of Health and Research,” which will house Europe’s leading neurology and oncology center. The project will also include the relocation of the IRCCS Foundation, the C. Besta Neurological Institute, and the IRCCS Foundation, the Cancer Institute, both of which already play a leading role in the national and international healthcare system.

Condotte 1880 holds a 40% stake in CISAR Milano S.p.A., which signed the concession contract in 2020 for the construction of the City of Health and Research in the municipality of Sesto San Giovanni (formerly the Falk Area).

Condotte 1880 holds a relative majority stake in CISAR, a company also owned by Finso (Fincantieri), Edison Next, and Italiana Costruzioni, which won the contract from the Region and, in particular, by Aria, the Lombardy Region’s agency for innovation and procurement.

The initiative for the new large hospital complex dates back many years and was born from the strategic goal of the Government and the Lombardy Region: to create an ultramodern hospital facility in synergy with the other post-Expo project, the Human Technopole Life Sciences. Furthermore, the Municipality of Sesto San Giovanni aimed to enhance and redevelop Europe’s largest brownfield site, spanning 1.5 million square meters.

The project, entrusted to star architect Mario Cucinella, will be a center of excellence for science and innovation, but also a place of reconciliation with nature. There will be a plaza and a covered walkway leading to the hospital’s wards, overlooking a large public park, as was the custom in the 1900s.

Particularly, in the Bolognese architect’s project, humanity and nature coexist with excellence in research and human care. The project includes the creation of five internal gardens, a metaphor for the organs and humanity as the measure of the landscape: the garden of breathing, the garden of emotion, the garden of fullness, the garden of change, and the garden of rebirth. Gardens of sensations, colors, seasons, and scents.

The City of Health begins with a large covered plaza, a meeting place and reception area. The spaces interact with the park, and from that plaza a large road leads, providing access to all outpatient services and leading to the large greenhouses, places for meeting and conversation between patients and visitors. Even in the patient rooms, large bay windows overlook the internal gardens, allowing for a daily connection with nature. The project aims to “bring the illness inside,” and to bring spaces of humanity, nature, urbanity, and work into the place of care.

Specifically, the construction work involves the construction of several buildings that will provide a usable floor area of ​​approximately 150,000 square meters, including covered areas for services spread across ten buildings, with four floors above ground and two underground for logistics.

The hospital will feature low- and high-complexity healthcare facilities, including an operating block with 20 operating rooms, including 4 hybrid rooms, 8 bunkers for nuclear accelerators, a bunker for proton therapy, a nuclear medicine department with a cyclotron, and a high concentration of medical technologies (MRI, CT, Gamma cameras, etc.).

Furthermore, the hospital complex will house major GMP-classified pharmaceutical laboratories, BSL level 3 and 4 biological containment risk laboratories, and a cryopreservation department. The core of the project will consist of a trigeneration plant located in a technology hub separate from the main building and a series of technical rooms for air conditioning, heat exchange, and electrical substations located in the hospital’s second basement.

The new complex will have 750 beds, 119 outpatient clinics, 42 laboratories, 20 operating rooms, and 5,000 doctors and nurses. It will be able to perform 1.5 million tests and outpatient services and will be able to accommodate 24,000 hospital admissions annually. In addition to the 50 beds for the health hotel, which will accommodate patients’ relatives, who are expected to come from outside the Lombardy region, there will also be a 24,000 square meter underground parking lot, a 55,000 square meter outdoor green area with over 10,000 trees, and a 77,000 square meter urban park.

Progress Report as of October 30, 2025  

Work continues on the reinforced concrete load-bearing structures. The foundation slabs have been constructed, and the floors up to the ground floor have been installed for four of the buildings, thus completing the underground portion of these buildings. Part of the pillars of the 1st floor level have been completed