Being There: A day in Milan

May 3, 2012

At home we ride our bikes everywhere, we are not used to walking much. However, today we decided we would see more if we used public transportation and walked. Riding in traffic, we would have had to pay more attention to the cars than anything else. By the end of the day my feet were burning and I was looking forward to getting back on my bike, traffic or not.

We started out at Milano Centrale, the main train station, to get a closer look at this monument built in a mixture of architectural styles, mainly Art Deco and Liberty. Mussolini wanted it to represent the glory of facsism. Not my favorite architecture, but nevertheless impressive.

Sculpture on the front of Milano Centrale

By contrast, across the street from the train station

From Milano Centrale we took the subway to Piazza Duomo. We took our time wandering through Milan's elegant shopping arcades, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The structure, built between between 1865 and 1877, is formed by two glass-vaulted arcades intersecting in an octagon which covers the street connecting Piazza del Duomo to Piazza della Scala.

Vaulted glass roof of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

Popular place for tourists to have their pictures taken

Looking up to the central dome of the Galleria

Next door is the Cathedral Duomo, the most important work of gothic architecture in Italy. It was started 1386 and during the construction of five centuries, the style changed with the times. The façade was started in 1567 and was built in a classic-baroque style with a variety of classical and neo gothic elements. 1805 the front works were finished, while the construction of the statues continued through the 19th century. We climbed to the top for a close view of the many statues and spires and also for a view looking down to the Piazza del Duomo and the arcades outside the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

Rental bikes with the Duomo in the background

The duomo is adorned with hundreds of these spires

We could take an elevator and then some more stairs to the roof top of the Duomo

Looking down from the roof of the Duomo to the entrance of the Galleria

Janos taking pictures on the roof of the Duomo

At noon we decided to get out of the tourist area so we took a tram and got off where it looked like it would be a good street for finding a bite to eat. The strategy worked and we found a cafe that served a simple and inexpensive lunch for people working in the surrounding office buildings.

Our next quest was for a fountain that Janos was keen on seeing, not because it was an important work of art but because he had personal associations with it. He had read about it as a boy when he was still living in Budapest and the world outside of the east block was inaccessable. Thanks to previous research in google, we found it easily after a short tram ride and some more walking.

Fountain of S. Francesco talking to the birds - but it looks like this one isn't listening.

We then discovered more of Milan by bus, tram, subway and on foot, ending up at the Castello Sforzesco. Had we realized that our route out of Milan on the next day was going to pass by the Castello, we might have saved ourselves the trouble and returned to our hotel for a rest a little earlier.

Rested and equipped not only with our cameras but also tripods, we set out again. We had dinner and then returned to the Piazza Duomo for some night shots. We were a little too late for the dusky blue sky after sunset which photographers so love but were content with our pictures of the cathedral with an inky black sky as a backdrop.

Night view of the entrance to the Galleria

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