All Saints Day in Milan

November 1 in Milan
Thursday morning we woke up significantly refreshed, despite the hard beds and stiff pillows. Because we had reservations to stay in Como on Friday night, we thought we should go check and see how we were going to get there. So the first thing we did was head to the train station where the trains to Como leave from. We checked on their schedule and determined that a train leaves about every half hour and it didn’t appear like you needed a reservation or ticket in advance. Outside the station was a tent of books and me, being the bibliophile that I am, of course I had to check it out. They were all in Italian of course, but I managed to find a copy of “I Promessi Sposi” by Manzoni which the guide book kept mentioning was the most famous book written about Milan. It was a cheap version, but i thought it a fun souvenir, so I grabbed that (and paid at the register without the guy catching on that I wasn’t Italian and switching to English!).

From there we headed to the castle. Castello Sforzesco is not as majestic and beautiful as the ones I’ve seen in other parts of Europe, but it was old (built in the 1400s) and important and one of the things on the Milan’s Top 10 list. The fog hadn’t burned off yet so it was chilly wandering around the compound. There were about 8 different museums housed in the castle. We opted for the archeological one and the decorative arts. Since I’m not on a study abroad program this time I haven’t been dragged around to 87 museums all showing “significant”, if only slightly varied, works of Renaissance artists and unknown medieval sculptors. That made me able to appreciate this museum more. It was really quite interesting with pieces of stonework from the 8th century and sculptures from the 12th, etc. (Old stuff makes me excited.) But the coolest thing in the museum was a room painted by Leonardo DaVinci. The walls are covered but you can see the ceiling which is just plain neat. The room was painted like a forest so the ceiling is covered in tree branches that are all intertwined with celtic gold braid patterns. It is of course faded with the years and had been painted over at one point, but the detail is really amazing. Little birds and flowers and vines everywhere. If you looked at it you would never guess that it was done by daVinci. Anyway, we sat in there staring at the ceiling for a good 15 mins, and then enjoyed goofing off in the rest of the museum, mimicking statues and posing with suits of armor. The museum also houses Michelangelo’s last sculpture “Rodanini Pieta” and Leonardo da Vinici’s “Codex Trivulzianus” manuscript. From there we walked out the back of the castle and through the autumn tinted park behind it to the Arche de Pace. It was....under renovation of course! Only half of it was covered with scaffolding. We stood there for a few seconds and Andrea said- that looks like the Arc de Triomphe, like they copied it. It looked in the guide book: The Arco della Pace was commissioned by Napoleon to celebrate his triumphant victory and entry into the city, but it wasn’t even finished when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo so it was instead dedicated to the European Peace reached in 1815. It’s smaller and not nearly as impressive as the Arc de Triumph but remarkably similar.

We strolled back to the main center of town and stopped at a sidewalk café for lunch where we both had pizza. Italian pizza is good, but it bears no resemblance to anything served in the US. Fast food has ruined my ability to appreciate fine cuisine I am afraid. I would have taken a nice hand-tossed Dominoes pepperoni pizza in exchange for my thin hard Italian one. What can I say? I’m a simple girl. After our repast, we went to the La Scala opera house to go through the museum of opera. Neither of us really cared that much about the museum, but it offered a view of the opera house interior from a balcony and we both really wanted to see that. I’m sure the museum would have been very interesting to someone who knew anything about opera, but the parts we liked the best were a display of fancy costume dresses. The interior of the opera house is basically the stereotype of what you imagine the inside of a grand theater to look like. Plush red velvet, gold accents, cream walls. It was huge and highly impressive. I can understand why seeing a performance there is such a big deal.

From there we went to St. Ambrose’s Basilica. Basilica Sant’Ambrogio is one of the most ancient churches in Italy, and was originally built by Bishop Abrose in 379-386 and took on it’s current facade in 1099. It was built over the site of the palace where Emperor Constantine issued his famous Edict in 313 granting early Christians the right to freely practice their religion. The church was interesting because of it’s long history, but the best part of the whole thing was that back behind the alter in an basement/anteroom type thing, they have the remains of Saint Ambrogio, as well as his disciples Gervase and Protase. And not only do they have them, they are on display. That’s right, being concealed in a stone tomb isn’t enough. So they have their skeletons in full pontifical attire laid out in glass cases. They have shoes and crowns and robes. It’s really strange. Normally you can just see it looking down from a window, but I happened to arrive back there right as the priest was giving a tour to some schoolboys and their dads, so he unlocked the gate so that they could walk around and get a better look, and he let the rest of us down there go through as well. It was just plain strange. For the record, if you ever decide to put my skeleton on display, jeans and a t-shirt is fine by me. I’d rather be comfortable if I’m gonna have to lay there with people staring at me. I think casual clothes would put people more at ease. But anything is fine as long as it doesn’t make me look fat.

We walked to the church where DaVinci’s The Lord’s Supper is housed. Sainta-Maria delle Grazie which was built in the 1400s.

Andrea and I both wanted to see the square where Mussolini’s body was hung. It was mentioned briefly in her guidebook but we couldn’t find it on any maps and the guidebook didn’t tell you where it was or how to get there. I thought I found it on the map. Piazzale Lorenzo. So we go traipsing across the city out to this square in a rundown part of town. And we’re looking and looking but don’t see any monument or plaque. And we start thinking maybe it’s not the right square. So we look in the guide book. Guess who memorized the wrong italian word? We were supposed to be in Piazzale Loreto, not Lorenzo. Goood job Lyndsey. I had to laugh though because this kind of thing runs in my family. My mom and my grandparents and I once took a road trip from Northwest Arkansas to Niagara falls and along the way we stopped at a lot of famous landmarks and somehow kept ended up in the wrong place. We couldn’t figure out why no one at the Eerie Canal visitor center knew the Eerie Canal song. About 10 miles down the road we got around to singing the rest of the song “from Albany to Buffallo-o” and realized that we had just stopped at the Eerie-Ohio Canal and not the real Eerie Canal in NY. And then we drove down a long dirt road to the “Lincoln family farm” only to find out, it wasn’t the log cabin where Lincoln grew up, but in fact, the farm that he bought for his parents once he was a grown man. It’s claim to fame? He visited them there at least once. Oh my. When we got to Niagara we double checked to make sure we were seeing the actual Niagara Falls and not something closely related.

Anyway, we finally found the correct Mussolini square. On the exact opposite side of the city from where I had taken us earlier. :-) As soon as we stepped off the metro it became obvious why the guidebooks and maps failed to tell you where it was. There’s nothing to see. We emerged at dusk into a busy modern city square surrounded by glass high-rises and financial buildings. Surely there must be a plaque or a monument or something to mark the historic moment?! Nope. There’s nothing on the square that remains from the days of the war. I assume the city was heavily damaged and so they found it easier to tear down and build new than to try to preserve the remnants of the past. I guess it makes sense. I can see how the Italian people would not want any reminders of that horrible period of their history. But still, I would think a plaque or something would be in order. After Mussolini was caught trying to sneak out of Italy disguised as a Nazi foot soldier up by Lake Como, he and his girlfriend were shot and their bodies were brought back to Milan with several other high-ranking government officials’ and were hung upside down from the awning of an Esso gas station in front of a mob of people who proceeded to basically treat their bodies like piñatas. I had never thought about it but Mussolini had a wife and kids and grandkids and they still live in Italy. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a family member that is so hated by so many people. What shocked me is that his granddaughter is actually in politics now. Ironically, she founded some neo-fascist party and managed to get elected to the European Parliament. I have to think that if Mussolini was your grandpa, you might not want to go around promoting modern day fascism. Just a thought. I can’t believe that modern day Italians would tolerate fascism. Talk about not learning from history. Yeah, anyway Alessandra Mussolini (whose Aunt is Sophia Loren) is evidently quite proud of her heritage and fought a legal battle to add her maiden name to her kids last names. Go figure.

It was dark when we left Mussolini’s square, but it was still early evening, and as we had gone to bed so early the night before, we decided we didn’t want to do that again. Most of the tourist attractions were closing so we decided to do a bit of shopping for “Milanish” fashions as Andrea decided all things from Milan should be called. Milanese just doesn’t sound right. It was kind of funny because we didn’t really go in any stores we couldn’t have gone to in Paris, but buying stuff in Italy gives you the chance to say “Oh yes, I picked this up in Milan” which is basically the whole reason to buy anything overseas. We shopped til we were ready to drop. Neither of us were starving and we were both pretty tired (can you blame us? Look at all the stuff we did in one day!) so we opted for our daily gelato in place of dinner (I had mango and coconut. It got 2 thumbs up.) and headed back to the hostel. We got ready for bed and turned on some MTV since it was the only channel we could understand, and watched some of the MTV’s European Music awards hosted by Snoop Dog in Munich. About 10 minutes into the show, Snoop does a costume change and comes out in.... lederhosen. Seriously. Unless you’ve seen it, it’s really hard to wrap your mind around Snoop Dog wearing full-on German folk attire. Wow. He added an urban jacket, but he sported the lederhosen for the rest of the show (at least as long as we watched which wasn’t all that long). And that, my friends, was day 2 in Italy.