Penthouse Flat In Milan’s Bosco Verticale Hits The Market – 6 Years After The Development Completed

Bosco Verticale in Milan’s Porto Nuovo area is one of the world’s most recognized developments, characterized by glass facades covered in dense foliage.

The two-tower, Stefano Boeri-designed development completed in 2014, and in that same year it won the International Highrise Award who deemed it the “most beautiful and innovative highrise in the world.” It has since inspired similar urban forest concepts in Shanghai, Beijing, Switzerland, Paris, the Netherlands, and the world’s first Forest City in China’s Liuzhou.

But buyers have had to wait until now to get their hands on its most prestigious home–the only penthouse apartment in its tallest tower. The property, which sits 26 stories off the ground and is completely enveloped in trees and plants, is now on the market for offers in the region of $17.5 million.

According to Matteo Ravà of Coima, the developer of the Bosco Verticale scheme, the penthouses were “held back while the community across Porta Nuova established itself and the value of the location could be recognised more widely.” Up until the 1990s, Porta Nuova was considered a suburb of the city and was not well known, “now, it is a major modern hub with international businesses and some 10 million visitors a year,” he says.

The 5,307-square-foot property show rooms has glass walls on its four sides that open fully and flow out into wide terraces, merging the indoor and outdoor spaces. Each of six terraces are “a private garden terrace in the sky, enveloped in the fragrant trees, shrubs and plants,” which are watered by an irrigation system and pruned and cut by the management service every six months. A total of 1,000 trees, 15,000 plants and 90 different species of shrubs and floral vegetation form living green façades across its two towers.

The property comes as shell and core with a design option (at an extra cost) by Italian design studio Coima Image and Dara Huang of Design Haus Liberty, which features light tones, pale wood flooring, marble paneling, and brass accents. The design draws on the property’s “ample light, nature and seasonality of the forestry”.

Beyond the natural surroundings are all-round views of the city, which take in the Duomo di Milan, Milan’s cathedral, and the Italian Alps in the distance. According to the developer, these views are rarely found in Milan since the city is mostly low rise. Below lies the landscaped, public green spaces of Biblioteca degli Alberi (Library of Trees), also known as BAM.

Revamped over the past decade by Coima with Qatar Holdings, who became an investor in the project in 2013, Porta Nuova has been transformed into a modern, high-rise district, which has become an extension of the city. Hailed as an urban regeneration success story, it has a new Gae Aulenti piazza and shopping mall, the BAM park, and landmark, gleaming towers including the UniCredit Tower and the Solaria, Italy’s tallest residential tower, where the footballer Lionel Messi bought a home in August, according to the Milan estate agency Cavour.

Porta Nuova’s new residential developments have been welcomed by both local people and overseas visitors and buyers, particularly from Brazil, Russia, China, and the US, according to Luca D’Angelo, residential director at Italy Sotheby’s International Realty, because they offer amenities such as fitness and meeting rooms and concierge services within close proximity to the city center. D’Angelo says the first apartments were delivered months before the 2015 Expo in Milan and helped to develop new business for short-term rentals mostly in Solaria’s smaller units.

Italy’s flat-tax for high-net-worth non-residents, introduced in 2017, and Brexit has “brought a new wealthy investor class in Italy who are mainly focused on Milan and interested in buying or renting luxury and unique properties,” D’Angelo says. D’Angelo says he recently sold two, 968 square foot properties at the Solaria tower for between $1.17 million and $1.4 million to Italian buyers who bought for investment purposes, and both properties are currently rented to foreign nationals.

This post first appeared on Forbes.com. To see the original, click here.