La Dolce Vita

The sweet life it's certainly been...

Denis had to go to Milan for a week, which means I got to go to Milan for a week. I have to say that Milan is fairly lost on me. I know there are a lot of people who would love to be in the Fashion Capital of the World, but then there's me, who's really not fashion forward in any way.

I did get to explore the sights, such as the impressive Gothic cathedral, the Duomo di Milano. It is the fourth largest cathedral in the world, with room for 40,000 people to fit comfortably inside. The cathedral took nearly six centuries to build and incorporates a number of contrasting styles, but, wow!, is it impressive. A recent cleaning has restored the exterior showing again the colors of the Candoglia marble.

Once you enter through the intricate bas-relief bronze doors, your eyes are immediately drawn up at the towering arches and pillars, and down at the exquisite inlaid marble floors.

Although the interior is rather dark, the sights are captured by the detailed stained glass windows depicting scenes from the life of the saints. The eight naves of the Cathedral are divided by 52—supposedly one for each week of the year—gigantic pillars topped by a series of niches with statues.

And some of the things that I thought were the coolest, are probably the creepiest (yeah, go figure). I thought the crypt was pretty amazing with so much incredible detail. There is a glass coffin of St Carlo Borromeo, once the archbishop of Milan, and later canonized as the patron saint of stomach diseases. A sculpture of St Bartholomew, who was skinned alive, shown wearing his skin around his neck. A small red light bulb in the dome above the apse marks the spot where one of the nails from the Crucifixion of Christ has been placed.

I can't believe that not once out of the three separate times I was at the Duomo did I remember you could go up to the roof! I'm really pretty bummed I didn't get up there. But then the cathedral is huge and amazing, and you discover something new each time you go.

Just outside of the Duomo is Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a high-end shopping arcade, featuring a metal and glass roof and detailed mosaics. It's sort of a connector between the Duomo and La Scala, the world-famous opera house. A statue of Leonardo daVinci, who spent 17 years in Milan as artist and engineer to Francesco Sforza and created one of his most well-known masterpieces during his time in the city, is in the adjoining piazza .

The Sforza Castle was originally built by the Viscontis, and later reconstructed by the Sforzas. (This is the family that Rodrigo Borgia had his daughter, Lucrezia, marry into hoping to get the support and protection from the family in Milan, for any The Borgias watchers.) The castle used to be residence of the Duchy of Milan, but was turned over to the city of Milan in the late 1800's and now houses several art collections.

I mostly wandered around by myself, stopping in at the Brera Art Gallery, which houses one of Italy's finest collections of medieval and Renaissance art. Napoleon is to be credited with obtaining most of the masterpieces from the area churches and monasteries, as well as an exchange with the Louvre. It's still an operating art academy and students were hanging out in the piazza.

I did take a bus tour one morning just so I could get in to see DaVinci's Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie (grrr, no pictures allowed). According to the hotel concierge, to try and get a single ticket on your own, you need to book about two months in advance (or maybe he gets kickbacks from the tour company for every sucker he books). Any way it was kinda nice getting driven around for a change. I had done so much walking over the past few weeks, that my blisters had blisters, and I finally gave up trying to be in any way fashionable, and broke out the sneakers. I did walk over to the Triennale Design Museum where they had an interesting exhibit on furniture design. A favorite artist of mine, Piero Fornasetti, is supposed to have a couple of his designs there, but I must have not purchased the proper ticket for the permanent collection. I did get to the Fornasetti store where they had all of the licensed items. I would love to have a collection of his Julia plates, which he designed from the enigmatic face of opera singer Lina Cavalieri, but settled for a pillow for now.

My wanderings also took me by the gigantic needle and thread, a tribute to Milan’s work in the fashion sector. The Arch of Peace, featuring a bronze statue on top, the “Chariot of Peace”. It's construction began under Napoleonic rule, and originally the chariot faced France, but after the fall of Napoleon at Waterloo, the chariot was turned around to face the city center. And Milan's aquarium, with exterior decorations based on aquatic themes, arranged around the god of the sea. I got there at just as they were closing for lunch, so I didn't go inside.

That pretty much wraps up my week in Milan. I still have two more places to write up, and hopefully they won't take me three weeks to get to.