Apart from its general plan, the principal features which remain essentially intact from the original seventeenth-century building are the piano nobile (although largely redecorated) and one of Richini’s courtyards.

The theatre, the oldest in Milan, is still in use as the Teatro Litta di Milano, which also has a second performance space located in the old stable block.

[1] In 1674 the palazzo passed to Bartolomeo’s daughter Margherita, wife of Fabio III Visconti Borromeo Arese; towards the middle of the eighteenth century, when his branch of the Arese became extinct in the male line, it was inherited by the Litta family, whose members were also prominent in the political life of the city.

Between 1752 and 1761 Bartolomeo Bolli constructed a new façade for the building, highly decorated in a late Baroque, or Rococò, manner.

[2] In 1740, Carlo Giuseppe Merlo built the imposing and scenographic forked staircase (a scalone a tenaglia) whose sophisticated curves lead to the apartments of the piano nobile.