Twenty-two days of one journey. Day nineteen
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What do we remember about the Italian cities we saw? Of course, cathedrals, museums, ancient architecture, creations of brilliant architects and artists, narrow streets and buildings with shabby plaster, sheets hanging across the streets, pants - without them there are no Italian cities, crowds of tourists of all stripes, the absence of any new construction in the historical part, as well as residential buildings above five floors.
Milan is not like that, there are buildings higher, there are no sheets on the ropes, there are the tallest buildings in Italy, there are few tourists, many disadvantaged quarters, many trees, flowers growing in the most unexpected places. There is not a single glazed balcony or loggia, there are no satellite dishes and outdoor units of air conditioners on the facades of buildings, there are no traffic jams and traffic jams,
incorrectly parked cars (but I found one! ). This is not the case in all the cities of Italy we visited. And there was a strong opinion that this was never there. But the fact that there are few tourists discouraged us at the end of our one-day stay in this city. There are more tourists in the small 8.000-strong San Gimignano than in 1.500, 000-strong Milan. And there is something to see!
We left the hotel at 10 am and followed this route:
Our route in Milan
The inscription was translated as follows: "Here are galactic sunflowers. " Then we saw how they sell sunflower oil for bottling
I didn't like the first house I saw
We moved around the city to the center, to the Duomo, which we must visit. The walk took almost four and a half hours, only outside and from afar looked at the sights indicated on the map.
Here is the Vertical Forest - residential buildings with trees planted on balconies:
House in the bushes, or "Vertical forest"
Next, the tallest (together with the spire) building in Italy is Unicreditbank. This whole area is called Centro Direzionale - business center.
Yesterday I made a special trip around Milan and "stumbled" on the building of the Central Railway Station. . .
Railway station
. . . to which they went.
Neat Milanese darned a bitten apple:
Well, against the background of such beauty and grandeur, you can’t throw bits.
Pyaterochka tram:
The same "ran" from Arcadia to the railway station in Odessa, in vain they were replaced with "comfortable" ones.
The tallest building in Italy, the office of the Pirelli firm, was built next to the station. . .
Pirelli Office – the tallest building
. . . on the roof of which there is a statue of the Golden Madonna - the Virgin Mary, an exact copy of the one on the highest spire of the Milan Cathedral and in whose honor the Duomo was erected. Her statue should be the highest in Milan - a condition for the construction of a skyscraper.
A hundred meters passed from the station, and thunder struck, it began to rain, it became dark.
Ten minutes later, it's like nothing happened. We walk with pleasure through the puddles. . .
. . . along Moskovsky Prospekt. . .
... (viale Moscova), slowing down at the Church of Santa Maria degli Angelo. . .
. . . (Chiesa di Santa Maria degli Angeli), then looking at the housing stock of Milan. . .
. . . not inferior in elegance to medieval palaces.
There are many refugees in Milan. This is for them:
Past the Civica Arena - the stadium that they wanted to demolish, but the Milanese did not allow - approached the Arch of Peace...
. . . (Arco della Pace), which began to be built in honor of the victories of Napoleon, but was eventually completed in honor of the victory over Napoleon – everything is fleeting and changeable in this world. And it has stood for almost two hundred years in Piazza Sempione, next to Sempione Park. . .
. . . which we entered and proceeded to Castello Sforzesco. . .
. . . (Castello Sforzesco), built in the 14th century for the Sforza dynasty - the Dukes of Milan . The same Milanese architects also built the Kremlin in Moscow, but almost no one mentions this.
Next - to the fountain. . .
. . . and the monument to Garibaldi. . .
. . . then along the street. Dante. . .
Dante Street
. . . went a little to the right and, entering the arch. . .
making his way through the thickets of bananas and palm trees. . .
. . . went to the Duomo.
Cathedral of the Holy Virgin. . .
. . . if you look closely at the details of the facade, it will strike you on the spot. I started counting the sculptures, counted three hundred and twenty (my wife left me and went to the shops). . .
. . . then I decided to call Google for help in counting and found out that there are 3400 of them, so it's time to look for a spouse, this is more important.
In this cathedral, in 1805, Napoleon was crowned and became King of Italy.
The cathedral can accommodate two and a half times more people than the Dynamo stadium in Kyiv, that is, 40.000 people.
I bought two tickets for 3 euros to see only the cathedral, I found my wife in one of the popular shops, where a robe for one and a half thousand euros began to stick to her. He offered instead a ticket to the cathedral, agreed immediately. Come in, look:
Sarcophagi with the remains of saints, an altar, sculptures and bas-reliefs, stained glass windows.
This is the last cathedral in Italy that we saw on our trip, I put it in second place after the Venetian San Marco.
There is a simple path to the monument to Leonardo da Vinci from the cathedral - through the gallery of Victor Emmanuel, but we are not looking for simple ways and go "roundabout"...
. . . to see, learn, understand something else.
And so we went to an incomprehensible building, which we accidentally paid attention to because of the poster:
This is the La Scala theater - and that says it all, it is not inferior to any museum and cathedral in grandeur and popularity.
And here is Leonardo with his students:
We sat next to them after a six-hour hike, a little regretted that we didn’t have a chance to see the “Last Supper” in Milan in Santa Maria del Grazie and about five different Santa Marias, didn’t go up to the roof of the Duomo, didn’t go into Santa Maria alla Fontana,
near which our hotel was located and where the nun invited, whom we “caught” on the street in connection with the search for the nearest supermarket at the beginning of the eighth evening. Three more days should be "spent" on Milan next time, he deserves it, and you too.
8 euros 50 cents for a taxi from La Scala to our hotel according to the meter, 10 euros accepted with gratitude.
We went to Auchan, picked up everything we could take to Kyiv, took a little for the road. Six different cakes for 3.5 euros were successfully delivered and "destroyed" by granddaughters and mother-in-law in two or three days. Apricot, cherry, peach were understandable, and lemon, especially cream, made me think, the recipe was incomprehensible. After three months of "torment", trial and error, the result appeared, which I will share, as well as "my" tiramisu recipe, in the appropriate section on the forum.
Julia and Stefania called in turn, ten minutes apart.
The first one arrives tomorrow afternoon in Milan on Via Giosuè Carducci (via Giosuè Carducci), and the second one arrives at a dacha fifty kilometers north of Milan. I really wanted to visit an old Milanese apartment, to see an old friend, with whom the beach in Cirali was cleaned clean from bags, bottles, pieces of paper. But for this it was necessary to stay in Milan for one more night, and time was running out.
It was decided to go to Stefania's dacha, in a small town on the shores of Lake Annone (Lago di Annone) called Galbiate (Galbiate).
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