This paper is devoted to the figure of Piero Portaluppi (1888-1967), a Milan based architect who was extremely active in the city and between 1929 and 1965 the maker of numerous amateur 16mm films. Now preserved in the Fondazione Piero Portaluppi, his collection ranges across all the genres of amateur cinema, from home movies to travelogues and fictional films, and it contains many highly interesting images of Milan and its urban transformations over the decades. The paper describes salient features of the collection, with a view to the possible practical reuse of these materials in an edited version.