A New Home for Barona: Piazza Paci Comes Alive with Sports, Community, and Inclusion

There are places that cease to be mere spaces when they come alive to tell stories. This is happening in Milan, in Piazza Paci, in the heart of Barona, where an old neighborhood sports field is being reborn to become something more: a gathering place, where energy flows and dreams know no bounds, a place to experience. Not just a simple redevelopment: a restoration. To the neighborhood, to the people, and to sports, which here once again becomes a promoter of inclusion and a universal language.

Thanks to a collaboration with the City of Milan and City District 6, Ford is redesigning a long-unused space, transforming it into a place for sharing. The court, completely renovated and reinterpreted under the artistic guidance of the Truly Design collective, becomes a giant open-air mural. In an urban jungle, a feline—symbol of energy, speed, and territoriality—struts through its streets with determination and resourcefulness. An invitation to break free from the daily routine and live a life outside the box.

The small field in Piazza Paci thus returns to being a small contemporary agora, a place where sport becomes a common language, capable of creating connections. A space that is completely free, open, and returned to the community.

“The initiatives carried out over the past year in this corner of the city are helping to make the Barona–Sant’Ambrogio neighborhood increasingly vibrant and inclusive, capable of generating opportunities and strengthening the sense of community,” stated Gaia Romani, Councilor for Participation of the City of Milan—“This project, in fact, is part of a broader series of initiatives right on Via Paci and its surroundings: a year ago we inaugurated the new school plaza on Via De Nicola and renovated the famous Centaur Fountain in Piazza Paci. A set of actions that enhance public spaces and tangibly improve people’s quality of life. It demonstrates just how essential it is to build synergies between institutions, the City Administration, the Municipality, private entities, and the local community to restore value to the city’s spaces.”

Ford Italia’s commitment fits into this balance between vision and practicality, having supported the initiative with an intervention designed to build value over time.

“For over 120 years, Ford has actively supported the communities where it operates and is present through its network, all over the world. For us, this project represents a tangible example of this commitment and how it translates at the local level into actions capable of building value over time,” commented Marco Buraglio, CEO of Ford Italia. “By returning a place like this to the Barona community, we are inviting people to reclaim urban spaces and take care of them.”

More than just an urban development project, Piazza Paci is once again becoming a vibrant space, capable of creating connections and bringing new energy to the neighborhood.

A value shared at the local level as well. Santo Minniti, President of City District 6, speaks of “a concrete investment in the neighborhood’s quality of life,” emphasizing that “providing gathering spaces means giving people—and young people in particular—positive and lasting points of reference.”

Working alongside Ford to ensure the long-term vision continues is Slums Dunk, an association founded by Bruno Cerella and Tommaso Marino that uses sports as an educational and social tool, with programs that start with play and the values of sports to build a possible future. “For us, sport is a powerful tool for education and redemption,” stated Tommaso Marino. “Here we want to build something that will stand the test of time, together with the neighborhood.”

The inauguration—well-attended, informal, and filled with genuine energy—alternated between official ceremonies and activities open to the public, immediately conveying the initiative’s deepest meaning: not a place to be observed, but a space to be experienced.

In a city that moves at a fast pace, Piazza Paci reclaims time. Time to unite, to welcome, to build. And it demonstrates that, sometimes, all it takes is a basketball court to get a community moving again.

The project is the result of a partnership agreement between the City of Milan, Municipality 6, Brand for the City, ICS Sant’Ambrogio, Fondazione L’Impronta Impresa Sociale, Condominio Box De Nicola Voltri, Slums Dunk ODV, and Truly Design, with the support of Ford Italia.