Una Lunga Passagiata in Milano

Our first day in Milano started very late because, man, Livia can sleep! But in this case after going to bed at 2am I could too… 


We headed into the City on an impromptu museum tour. Our first stop was a coffee shop by the Duomo, where I got a brioche (they don’t call breakfast pastries cornetti here) called Maritozzo, which is a cream puff with a bread ball around it. The whipped cream was delicious but I can’t imagine having that for breakfast regularly. I can’t remember if I ever saw the Duomo without scaffolding - I think the only other time I saw it the facade was being restored. It was so impressive. I think in photos it looks flatter than it is- the relief sculptures definitely give it some depth. Right next to the piazza is the Galleria Vittoria Emanuele II, which is so beautiful, I love walking through these in Italian cities. The acoustics, the sense of togetherness and bustling, the energy is so great. There is a new addition though- there are balloon vendors right outside the Galleria so now in the ceiling you can see all these balloons of Superman, Dora the explorer, and Bluey floating right below the ceiling. There was a massive Christmas tree in the rotunda which was also beautiful. 











From there we walked through Castillo Sforzesco which was a medieval castle with huge walls around a courtyard, into Parco Sempione, which was a lovely commons behind the castle. The moat of the castle is actually still there which is cool. 



The Triennale is an art and design museum with specific exhibitions that you can go to. One was of Italian Architect and designer Gae Aulenti who has beautiful ink on Mylar drawings. She was alive from the 1920s to early 2000s and was known for designing showrooms, but also homes, theater exhibitions, light fixtures, and it was cool to actually see the drawings and then real life objects she designed, and 1:1 scale models of her spaces (this was a theme of Triennale. We also saw an exhibit of “a room within a room” which was designed by an Architect named Sottsass for his friend Lana. It was a versatile space, a community room with a perimeter layer of spaces that you could live in, storage, workspace, etc. it was an interesting concept and again a cool way to experience the space in 1:1 scale. The last exhibit we saw was an exhibition of all objects made for human scale (clothing, furniture, etc) by architects, so it was about celebrating and designing based on the human body. 




From there we took a taxi to Fondazione Prada, which is an incredible adaptive reuse exhibition space by OMA. Most projects in Europe have an adaptive reuse component, which I really appreciate because it is so different than LA. This one had an older nondescript building around a courtyard that contained 2 towers. One, the haunted house, was converted to exhibition space but at a different scale than the new construction tower which had much bigger interior spaces that accommodated rotating exhibitions. And then there was a glass pavilion in the center that had this super cool musical exhibit of hundreds of flip flops making this melodic and percussionist immersive musical experience.  Overall a big hit. 







After the Fondazione Prada we walked for a very long time to Navigli, a bustling part of Milano with tons of restaurants along the river. It was very festive with lights and we stopped for dinner at this lovely restaurant. Livia recommended against the pasta because northerners don’t know how to make pasta so I ordered the Ossobuco con risotto- this is veal with bone marrow in the center over a bed of risotto. It was absolutely delicious except the visual of eating bone marrow out of an actual vertebrae was a little unsettling. Livia got the Polenta con funghi which was also good but the appetizers stole the show… the Toretta di melanzane (like eggplant Parmesan) was amazing and the Lardo con crostini (yes literally it is pig fat seasoned on carrera marble according to ChatGPT) were so amazing. All that and a bottle of wine was only €100 which I thought was great and Livia thought was super expensive compared to Roma. Our walk back completed my New Year’s Day of 24,000 steps, and we went to bed not early enough for our early train ride to Torino!




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