Italia Day 1 - Milano

After a long long flight from Sydney-Singapore-London-Milan I finally arrived in Italia on Tuesday. My gorgeous girlfriend C met me at the airport & helped me navigate the public transport system back to her flat in Zara. After a shower & a bit to eat (check Eat More Vegies soon for a report on my food adventures), we headed into town for the afternoon to do some exploring.

The definite highlight of Milano is the Duomo di Milano (Milan Cathedral). This is the largest cathedral in Italy, around 700 years old & completely faced with marble.

I will never forget the feeling of ascending the steps from the Metro to have this amazing structure revealed to me in all its glory.

We weren't dressed appropriately to go inside the cathedral (with knees & shoulders uncovered), so we just wandered around the outside admiring the intricate detail, like this window:

and these faces:

Down a narrow laneway near the cathedral we spotted this tower peeking through.

It turned out to be the bell tower of San Gottardo in Corte, a 700 year old church. Just beautiful.

From the tower we looped back around to Piazza del Duomo and wandered through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II arcade.

This is the stunning glass dome covering the octagonal roof at the centre of the arcade.

Tragically, the architect who designed the galleria (Giuseppe Mengoni) died just months before its completion by falling off the roof. Apparently visitors can avoid Mengoni's bad luck by spinning around on the testicles of a bull in the mosaic floor. I was pretty keen to avoid bad luck so here I am spinning around. The floor here is completely worn down.

I don't remember exactly where this statue was, but I was quite taken with the arrangement of the pigeons on him.

I honestly can't remember the name of this square but it was extremely old.

Each column had the names of what we presumed were soldiers, so it may be some kind of war memorial.

Finally, to finish day 1 of my Italian adventure, here is some library porn. This is the Biblioteca Zara - the public library of Zara, Milan. Unfortunately it was closed.