City walk in Milan
Having addressed the issue of Milan’s alleged lack of “Italianness” in last week’s post, we will today deal with another stick that is often used to beat the city with: Milan “does not do quirky”, it is said. This is an accusation that can be refuted rather easily. All it takes is a visit of…
You will often hear people say that Milan is the “least Italian of Italian cities”, by which they mean: a well-ordered place that lacks the “typically Italian” sense for the joys of anarchy. On today’s walk, we will do two things: first, confirm that, yes, Milan is rather straight-laced and square (in more than on…
If you are in a rush, you could reduce those two hours in Milan to 15 minutes …. and still see Italy’s largest Cathedral, the world’s oldest shopping mall and opera’s most famous theatre, all of them “next-arcade neighbours” in one of the smallest central cores of any major city in Europe In the last…
… at Milan’s Cimitero Monumentale But there are cracks in the bombast, and you can feel how a very modern sense of discomfort is creeping in. For centuries, death operated a strict two-tier system: cathedral tombs it was for crowned heads and high clergy, the local churchyard for everybody else. (Unless you were a certified…