Aug 17 - Milan

 Aug 17 - Milan

We went for a walk into town this morning, the area where the touristy bits are, and I must admit that my opinion of Milan has improved a little.  There are some lovely old impressive buildings around but it’s still a little bit grubby. I know it’s a big city but the city councils need to lift their game a touch and start doing some cleaning. 

Our first stop in town was to the Milan Cathedral.  This IS a building that’s having some work done to it and, although mostly covered in scaffolding, it looks pretty spectacular (apparently there are over 3,000 statues on the building!).  Unusual for us and cathedrals but we didn’t actually go in this time. There were four entrances to the building, all with queues, and the longest was about 200 metres long!  Even the ticket office queue was about 100 metres long so we took the decision that the inside can wait for another occasion. 

Our next stop was to the nearby Galleria de Vittorio Emanuele II.  This is Italy's oldest active shopping gallery, built in the late 1800’s and named after the first king of the Kingdom of Italy.  Inside the buildings are pretty speccy and are just full of luxury retailers, restaurants, and cafes. It’s also home to some of the oldest shops in Milan (Borsalino, a hat shop, has been there since 1883!)

Once we’d finished our shopping in Tiffany, Pravda, Dior, and Louis Vuitton 😂 we moved on to the nearby theatre La Scala.  We were hoping to get some last-minute tix up in the ‘Gods’ but unfortunately there’s nothing showing in August (there’s actually a lot of shops, businesses, and restaurants all on holiday at the moment) so instead we went on a tour around the inside and then a wander around their museum.  Not that I’m an expert but some of the boxes seemed remarkably small here as they were only two seats wide. Even so they apparently sell a number of seats behind these two, as ‘restricted view’, as there’s always a huge demand for seats. 

Our last visit of the day was to the Castello Sforzesco, a medieval castle built by Francesco Sforza, the Duke of Milan in the 15th century.  Since then however it’s been renovated and enlarged, and in the 16th and 17th centuries it was one of the largest citadels in Europe. Quite impressive in size it was nice to have a wander around and take in the enormity of the place. 



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