On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Deputinize America
Back in the Before Times in February 2024, we scheduled a getaway to Malta for Carnival. Because you can’t easily get to Malta without another stop, we had to go through Milan, a city I had never been to yet. Fulfilling my need to see every major piece of Renaissance art, I felt obligated to stay for a couple of days to see the sights and was not disappointed.
For those who haven’t spent much time considering Italian history or geography, Milan is a more northerly Italian city, wet in winter, not quite to the alpine regions and cold as balls in February. They adored Garibaldi, opera and a good time – plus, communists and trade unionists had a real presence there. Fun fact – Mussolini’s body was strung up like a hog on display by communist partisans in Milan after he was killed elsewhere in the Italian north.
Anyway, the people of Milan were so very into their good times that ever present responses to Allied bombing raids of industrial facilities and the city itself was to repair damage to the roof of La Scala (the famed opera house). They had already started doing the layers of sandbags to protect The Last Supper in 1940 – they knew it was going to eventually be really bad and didn’t want anything to happen to it.
Ahead of our walking tour, we had a delightful bit of breakfast sandwich with cappuccino on the square in front of Sforza Castle. This is a massive 15th century structure, and every schoolkid inLombardy wound up arriving to do a field trip that morning, which was cute and made me really jealous as to the variety of things they have available to see.
Garibaldi unified Italy over the course of the 1860s and 1870s. Prior to that, there was no agreement even as to an Italian language.
Our walking tour found us in the Opera House. it is completely refurbished due to extensive war damage.
There’s a museum there in the Opera House (the thing is massive), and it is filled with an odd, not real edited collection of flotsam and jetsam, some related to the Opera and its history, some just sort of accumulated from other sources. This oddity was one of the latter, coming from the collection of someone with an affinity for odd instruments.
It looked like a nightmare to handle and play.
This is an incredibly upscale mall, at the center. They had really nice restaurants (perfect for the wet weather), were a half block from our hotel, butted straight up to the Duomo, were a visual delight, and totally stymied my desire to buy a scarf since they were 900 euros each.
My wife laughed at me as I left the store, dejected.
This cathedral is stunning inside and out. It took some bomb damage, but it clearly was somewhat protected.
Leonardo used a previously unknown formulation of paints in this fresco. Applying paint to wet plaster in increments of only a foot or two square at the time, it still shows surprising color. The monks at this church didn’t realize the value of what they had; this was simply a dining hall. In order to use it more easily, they cut a doorway and removed Jesus’ feet sometime in the mid 1600s. Restorationists won’t recreated that which is lost forever, so they simply painted an arch to represent the misplaced doorway.
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Baud
Cool. I’ve never been to Milan. Won’t shoot for February.
eclare
Thanks for the photos! I see a Dior store in that mall, so yes, upscale.
Royko
Inspiring the career of Rob Liefeld.
Very cool photos/descriptions.
oldster
The Galleria is stunning, and thank god you can walk through without buying since the prices are stunning like a cattle gun.
It was not the first shopping arcade with a roof, but, to quote Wiki,
”The Milanese Galleria was larger in scale than its predecessors and was an important step in the evolution of the modern glazed and enclosed shopping mall, of which it was the direct progenitor. It has inspired the use of the term galleria for many other shopping arcades and malls.“
Milan is also a major center for fashion, and I stumbled into a fashion shoot on the Dom Square, just adjacent to the Galleria, where the girls were so abnormally beautiful that they too left me stunned. If you have ever been around NBA players then you may have had that sense that the people are so physically exquisite that they seem almost like a different species, like human-giraffe hybrids, and the models in Milan were like that, too.
For a more reflective visit in Milan, to quiet the fleshly agitation brought on by the Galleria, you can see the Basilica di Sant Ambrogio, where Saint Ambrose taught, and where St Augustine certainly visited.
stinger
Sorry about your balls in February. Going forward, I shall use that as a comparative measurement.
Raoul Paste
So enjoyable. Thanks for posting this
JML
@Royko: Ha! killer reference.
Milan looks lovely. Will add it to the ever-lengthening list.
MCat
Wow! Thanks for these great photos. I would love to go there. I’m really enjoying your trip.
arrieve
Thanks for this–I’ve never been to Milan, and now I really want to go. Italian breakfast sandwich and cappuccino followed by a day of amazing art? Yes, please.
pluky
“the girls were so abnormally beautiful that they too left me stunned.”
The torture so many girls and women go through trying to match what is basically a gift of the genetic lottery astounds me. But then, there is a multi-billion dollar industry pushing the con that this foundation, this diet, this outfit, this whatever will do the trick.
And don’t get me started on the parents that push junior into some high level athletic endeavor cuz scholarship/shot at the pros/reflected glory.
TB Hill
Mussolini was killed about 75km from Milan after having fled that place a day or two before. He had been captured alive, along with his lover and a few others; they were executed in captivity.
There was virtually a civil war in Italy between Sep 1943, when Italy surrendered to the allies, and May 1945 when the Germans surrendered. Mussolini was of course still around and formed a government in the northern regions still under axis control. Broadly, the fascists were supported by the nazis and the usual rightwing suspects; the partisans were supported by the socialists, communists and liberals. Something like 100,000 people were killed in this civil war that was happening even as WW2 continued.
It’s a complex period for Italians. I know a guy who served in the Italian Army in the first half of WW2 when Mussolini was still in charge of the whole country. After he was deposed and Italy switched sides, many Italian army units were made prisoners by the Germans. This happened to my friend, who then found himself sent to Dachau. Dachau was liberated by the Seventh US Army in 1945 and he made his way to the USA.
BigJimSlade
@oldster: I walked out of a store in Berkeley in the late 80s and Manute Bol walked by. I think he leaned toward the giraffe side, lol. It seemed like his thighs were somewhere almost up to my shoulders, and I’m 6′ 2″, or used to be anyway, maybe half inch less now :-/
oldster
@pluky:
Yes, it is a horrible system, and deeply misogynistic. Nor do the winners of the genetic lottery have an easy ride, either — the girls who go into modeling are subjected to all sorts of pressures and abuses themselves.
I regularly thank the gods that I was not cursed with any beauty or any athletic ability either!