Portello Plant — Alfa Romeo Factory, Milan
The Portello plant was the physical heart of Alfa Romeo for three-quarters of a century — the factory where every model from the 24 HP of 1910 to the Alfetta of the early 1970s was built, and where the company’s engineering identity was formed. The 6,700-square-metre factory was originally built in 1906 by French automaker Darracq in the Portello district of northwest Milan, on a 36-hectare site chosen for its proximity to the road to the Simplon Pass. When the Italian Darracq subsidiary was wound up in late 1909, Ugo Stella and a group of Italian investors acquired the assets; Giuseppe Merosi had been hired in autumn 1909 specifically to design Italian-market cars. On 24 June 1910 the factory became the birthplace of A.L.F.A. — Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili — and with it, the Alfa Romeo story began.
The factory’s fortunes tracked the company’s. Under Nicola Romeo’s management after 1915, Portello was massively expanded for wartime production of trucks, aero-engines, and railway equipment; by the early 1920s it was the centre of some of the most sophisticated racing car engineering in the world, under Vittorio Jano. In 1938, new Alfa Corse buildings were erected adjacent to the Portello plant to support the factory’s official racing programme. Three Allied bombing raids in 1943 destroyed approximately 60% of the plant — a devastating blow during wartime. All 5,000 Alfa Romeo employees participated in the rebuilding effort, and production resumed in 1946. From 1950, Orazio Satta Puliga’s 1900 — the first mass-produced Alfa Romeo, built on a production line — was assembled at Portello, transforming the facility from a workshop of artisanal quality into a volume manufacturing plant.
By the late 1950s, Portello had been outgrown. In October 1956 Alfa Romeo’s board decided to build a new facility capable of sustaining modern mass production; land was purchased north-west of Milan spanning the municipalities of Arese, Rho, Lainate, and Garbagnate Milanese. Construction of the new Arese plant began in 1960 and was completed in 1963 — spanning two million square metres, roughly three hundred times the area of the original Portello site. The Giulia, unveiled in June 1962, was the first car developed specifically for the new factory. Production transferred progressively through the 1960s and into the 1970s; the Portello site retained administrative and engineering functions as Arese assumed manufacturing primacy. The Arese plant employed nearly 20,000 workers at its peak in the early 1980s. The last Alfa Romeo employee left the Portello headquarters at Via Traiano in 1986, coinciding with the Fiat acquisition that ended the company’s independent existence. The factory buildings were subsequently demolished; the site was partially used by filmmaker Gabriele Salvatores for his 1997 film “Nirvana.” The Parco del Portello, a public green space incorporating design references to the industrial past, was inaugurated on the site in 2011.
Connections
- Alfa Romeo — main manufacturing site, 1910–1986, source: wikipedia.org
- Ugo Stella — established A.L.F.A. at Portello site, 1910, source: wikipedia.org
- Giuseppe Merosi — designed first cars here, 1909–1923, source: wikipedia.org
- Nicola Romeo — expanded factory for WWI production, post-1915, source: wikipedia.org
- Vittorio Jano — led Portello racing engineering department 1923–1937, source: wikipedia.org
- Orazio Satta Puliga — oversaw transition to mass production at Portello (1900, 1950), source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Corse — buildings erected adjacent to Portello, 1938, source: wikipedia.org
- Fiat — acquisition triggered final closure, 1986, source: wikipedia.org
- Alfa Romeo Giulia 2016 — Alfa Romeo Museum at Arese is the successor site; Giulia 2016 unveiled there, source: wikipedia.org