Today was Mer’s day – she was in charge, and it was our last full day in Milan. Since Milan is a fairly large city built on a plain with no major river in the city, the sights are all more or less of the man-made variety, and so Mer based her day around those sites.
We started the day off walking toward the Duomo. Mer put me in charge of breakfast, and I saw a possible cafe down a side street and decided to try it. It was excellent, and very local in color – although the people behind the bar spoke English to me, everyone in the place was clearly (and loudly) Italian. Mer and I got two pains au chocolat (chocolate-filled pastries), and I got the thickest hot chocolate I have ever had – it was pretty close to trying to drink pudding. It was still a tasty breakfast.
Thus fortified, we walked to the Duomo square, and past the Galleria, to behind it, to a small square in front of our destination, the world-famous La Scala opera house. Mer wanted me to see it for cultural literacy, but they also have a small opera museum inside that also lets you into a box seat to see the theater itself. The theater is very impressive, with the stage more or less as big as the audience space, and with box seats lining three walls, five or six boxes high. We had the good luck to be there when the stage crew was testing some lights for a forthcoming production of The Valkyrie, and the lights back-lit a small forest of metal poles that cast wild shadows over the stage. It was very striking.
The opera museum was actually pretty interesting (I’m not an opera aficionado). It had lots of strange instruments from over the years, and I love instruments. It had portraits and costumes and busts and manuscripts of operas – Mer was able to identify the place in the music from the handwritten score of Verdi’s Requiem, which I found impressive.
Perhaps our favorite display was a special display on the opera Aida. The exhibit had costumes and props from four different productions of Aida from four different decades. That was cool enough, but the focus of the rooms was the artwork of Italian gradeschoolers who had done artwork based on Aida. The work was deeply impressive – some of it would have gotten an “A” from Meredith in her twelfth grade AP English class, let alone in a class of fifth grade students. Meredith had tried to impress on the students in her J-term Italian culture class that the history and culture of Italy run very deep in the people, and these student displays showed that quite well.
After the opera museum, we made the short walk over to the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana museum, which is the best art museum in Milan, and has a special exhibit on Leonardo da Vinci, with many of his handwritten journal entries on display (fun fact – Leonardo wrote his notes backwards, for some reason). Mer’s guidebook said the museum would take eighty or ninety minutes. It took us two and a half hours, of course. We did get an audioguide to tell us about the important artwork, which was very useful. Much of the artwork is religious in nature, which I love because I know the subject material. Just as interesting as the artwork was the museum itself – the building is varied and beautiful. The only downside is if you follow the suggested route through the museum, you can easily miss two or three rooms of art that require you to double back before seeing the Leonardo exhibit.
The Leonardo exhibit was eye-opening. I knew the man was a genius, but it was ridiculous. He was an important artist and engineer and civil engineer. On his sketches, on a single page, he might have the sketch of a large sculpture, a primitive forklift to move that sculpture, and some random geometry problems. And his notes are all like that – physics and art and metallurgy and engineering and on and on.
The best way to follow genius is lunch, and we had a great one. Mer took me to an Italian fast-food place that was mobbed, mostly by locals. They served up, essentially, fried calzones (folded pizzas). Oh, man, were they good. It was one of the rare times where the main meal was much better than the still-good dessert.
By this time it was 2:30 or so, and we finished the day of touring with an extensive exploration of the Duomo, the cathedral of Milan. To get inside the church is still free, even for tourists, and so we walked around the inside of the church looking at things Mer’s guidebook pointed out. Then, we rented recorded commentary that told us information on fifty or so things in and about the cathedral. It was very informative, and a little overwhelming. The cathedral is just as impressive and decorated on the inside as it is on the outside. The single biggest surprise for both me and Mer was the display of three dead cardinals in glass-sided tombs. Two were from the early twentieth century, but one located in the small crypt was from the fifteenth century. All three were decked out in their cardinal robes and were wearing death casts of their faces. I have to admit that I have never seen anything like that before in any of my travels.
Some other things we found interesting – there was a small chapel in the crypt dedicated to cinema. They showed the crucifixion scene from Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, but with much of the center of the screen blacked out. The result was only hints of what was going on, which was very effective in creating a sense of confusion and chaos during the crucifixion. We also were both impressed with a carved marble slab with the names of all the bishops of Milan, from the current bishop, who took office in 2011, all the way back to the first bishop of Milan, around the year 55. The church also had a tomb of a bishop from around 1050, the treasury had book covers from the fifth century, and the cathedral itself was started in the fourteenth century. Christianity is an old religion, and these great churches help you feel some of that history.
After touring the inside of the church, Mer wanted to tour the roof, which you can do. We climbed up a bunch of stairs to one of the lower roofs (about seven stories, I believe), where you are free to wander around among the carvings and buttresses. I have a deep fear of heights, but I did well in places on the roof where there was a lower roof. I panicked pretty well in all the places that had a sheer drop. I did half the tour and then sat down in a safe enclosed space, and I let Mer do the rest by herself. She said it was very cool, including more stairs to get you up to the highest roof (another three stories or so), and she got to walk under a bunch of buttresses. I was happy for her, but glad I did not attempt it.
We called the official touring quits after that, but it was too early for supper, since Italian restaurants tend not to open until 7:00 or later, and it was only 6:00. So, we strolled some of the pedestrian shopping areas, and got some gelato near the castle. We actually wandered into the castle to see if the cats were still there (they were not) before heading to the restaurant. We got rained on lightly, but the threatening thunderstorm never did much more than produce thunder, so we were happy enough. Sadly, the restaurant Mer wanted to go to was closed, so we went to one down the street. We were the only customers (Italians eat supper much later than Americans do), and we got a rice and sausage dish that was filling but fairly bland – a first for me and Italian food.
We finished the evening off trying to find a dessert place selling Magnum ice cream in custom flavors, but never did find it. We did find an amazing chocolate place that had a huge chocolate fountain on display in the window. That is usually enough for us, but the inside was chaotic, and we could not figure out the menu or the ordering system, so we headed on back to the hotel, in a very rare non-dessert state of having eaten.
I think we had a highly successful day in Milan, and I have a good feel for the core of the city. Now I’m looking forward to the mellower lake district tomorrow.