A day in Milan 2008
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21st March 2008 - Milan and onwards to Turin
Having
slept very well in our Starhotels Anderson room, we partook
of a reasonable breakfast and headed into Milan town - around
a 30 minute walk from the hotel.
We entered the older central part of Milan through the gate at Piazza Cavour and very quickly found ourselves at the world famous Teatro La Scala - aka World Opera Central. Past the statue of Leonardo da Vincci opposite La Scala, we entered the Vittoria Emmanuelle II shopping mall. It's rather appropriate, given Milan's reputation, that Milan should play host to what is reputed to be the worlds first modern shopping mall which dates from the mid-19th century.
Having spent a little time pondering the shops (actually pondering the building itself!) and lingering over a coffee, we headed outwards and onward to the Duomo.
I'm
not actually a great fan of Milan as a visitor but The Duomo
is enornmous enough to impress even the most hardened cynic
- myself included. Capable of holding a congregation of 40,000
people, the Gothic Cathedral
is a masterclass in architecture on a large scale. Hundreds
of butresses, including the impressive flying and high-flying
variety, keep the structure intact. The exterior is decorated
with 3,200 statues of which only a fraction are visible from
ground level. For the remainder you have to visit the roof
of the cathedral to get close to them.
As is common with Cathedral of this size, the Duomo was build over the site of previous churchs and basilicas as Milan became more important. On the right hand side of the entrance, there is a small archeological site (entrance 2EUR tickets from the bookshop) below the existing Cathedral where you can see the remains of a Church and Baptistry that existed before the Duomo was constructed.
One of the most impressive aspects of the Duomo, apart from it's immense size, are the three apse windows. The windows, and it's abundantly clear when you look at them, are many meters by many meters. One window depicts the New Testament, another the Old Testament and the central window depicts the Apocolypse. A scene from each is depicted in a "sub-window" in each of the three windows.
After lunch (the Duomo took a lot longer than I expected!) we headed over to the Palazzo Reale for an exhibition of the works of Canova. The Canova's are being displayed until early July as part of a cultural deal with Russia which has allowed these pieces to travel from The Hermitage museum in St Petersburg to Milan. Without a shadow of doubt, the star piece of the exhibition is Canovas Three Graces - which is rightly world famous. The Three Graces are Splendour, Joy and Prosperity - the daughters of Zeus - and are depicted as elegantly and suppelly as one would expect of the Graces of the King of the Gods. The Three Graces are displayed alone in a square room with mirrors on each wall - which allows you to walk around them with ease and admire the sculpture from each side while also being able to appreciate the whole form and how each part of the sculpture fits, with apparent ease, into a cohesive whole.
The Palazzo Reale has also displayed works by other Neo-Classicists such as Wolff and Bainaime and Lorenzo Bartolini which allows the visitor to compare the works of Canova against the works of other artists of the time. This is a splendid idea as it provides an oppurtunity to ascertain why and how a particular artist managed to attain the status they did. It's kind of like the peer review performed by many modern scientists only many years after the participants have passed on.
After
the Canova exhibition, we pottered across the road back to
the Duomo and parted with 7Euro to get the lift to the roof.
You can goto the roof of the Duomo on food if you so desire
for the lesser price of 5 Euro - but the day was pressing on
and we had a train to catch before long. The roof of the Duomo
affords excellent views over the city as well as up close viewing
of the flying buttresses and many of the higher statues on
the exterior. This is not one of those escapades for those
of you with a fear or dislike of heights as looking down at
the people below really does make you realise how high you
are. (Actually, I have no idea how high I was and wasn't prepared
to ask the people were small enough!)
Having had our fun in Milan, we made our way back to Milano Centrale and caught our train to Turin.
After our 70 minute ride to Torino Porta Susa, we took the 15 minute walk to our hotel, the Townhouse 70 which was very centrally located in Turin. Reception and checkin was quick, efficient and hospitable.
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- Turin Tourism
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