Sights in Lombardy & The Lakes
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Cimitero Monumentale
Behind striking Renaissance- revival black-and-white walls, Milan’s wealthy have kept their dynastic ambitions alive long after death with grand sculptural gestures since 1866. Nineteenth-century death-the-maiden eroticism gives way to some fabulous abstract forms from midcentury masters. Studio BBPR’s geometric steel-and-marble memorial to Milan’s WWII concentration camp dead is stark and moving. Grab a map inside the forecourt - it’s easy to get lost.
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Parco Sempione
Everything you’d expect from Milan is here: a historic castle (Castello Sforzesco), chic bars, a museum honouring design (Triennale di Milano), lovely Liberty-style buildings (Civico Acquario) and an architectural conversation piece (Torre Branca). Plus there’s grass, winding paths, relaxed people, and peace and quiet, too.
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Giardini Pubblici
A life story unfolds as you follow pebble paths past bumper cars and a carousel, onward past a game of kick to kick, kissing teens, a beer kiosk, baby prams, jogging paths and shady benches. Jump in, or just stop and smell the roses. For grey days the charming Museo Civico di Storia Naturale beckons, the grand neo-Romanesque building houses dinosaurs, fossils and the largest geology collection in Europe.
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Palazzo Te
The main reason to visit Mantua’s other Gonzaga palace, Palazzo Te isn’t its modern art and Egyptian displays, but the fanciful 16th-century palace itself. Built by Giulio Romano, over-the-top rooms include the Camera dei Giganti, one of the most fantastic and frightening creations of the Renaissance, adorned with dramatic frescoes depicting Jupiter’s destruction of the Titans.
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Duomo
A frenzy of flying buttresses, 135 spires and a staggering 3200 statues, Milan’s Gothic Duomo is the world’s largest of its kind, and third largest in any style in Europe. This vision of pink-tinged Candoglia marble was commissioned in 1386 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti and has a capacity for a congregation of 40,000 (Milan’s population at the time).
Centuries of construction (from east to west) finally saw it largely completed in 1812 (although various bits and bobs would not be attached until the 1960s). Crowning this Gothic splendour is a gilded copper statue of the Madonnina (Little Madonna), the city’s traditional protector. Curiously, there’s no bell tower.
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Castello Sforzesco
Originally a Visconti fortress, this immense red-brick castle was later home to the mighty Sforza dynasty that ruled Renaissance Milan. The castle’s defences were designed by Leonardo da Vinci; Napoleon later drained the moat and removed the drawbridges. Today, it shelters a series of specialised museums.
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Museo Inter & Milan
Officially it’s called Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, after a Milanese champion of the 1930s and ‘40s, but to football fans it’s simply San Siro. Milan’s two football teams AC Milan and FC Internazionale (Inter) play here every weekend from October to May. The distinctive red-girdered roof and striped concrete towers were added when the stadium was renovated for the 1990 World Cup, the design also boosting its capacity to 85,700. Serie A fans head for the Museo Inter e Milan, boasting nonstop screenings of matches, memorabilia and trophies galore. Carnival-style papier-mâché dummies of two-dozen football stars (spot your favourite: Gullit, Rijkaard and Matthaus are all…
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Castello di San Giorgio
Palazzo Ducale's centrepiece is Castello di San Giorgio, overflowing with works of art collected by the Gonzaga family, Mantua's long-time rulers. Don't miss Andrea Mantegna's Camera degli Sposi, a wonderful series of frescoes executed by the master between 1465 and 1474 in one of the castle's towers. The trompe l'oeil oculus adds a playful touch to the more formal family scenes.
Other rooms worth pausing over include the Sala del Pisanello, decorated with unfinished 15th-century frescoes of Arthurian legends by Pisanello, the heavily frescoed Sala di Troia and the Camera dello Zodiaco, with its magnificent deep-blue ceiling festooned with figures from the zodiac. Equally…
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Il Vittoriale degli Italiani
Its heyday is recalled at the fabulous estate Il Vittoriale degli Italiani. Italy’s controversial poet and ultranationalist, Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863–1938) retreated here in 1922 because, he claimed, he wanted to escape the world that made him ill. Visits to d’Annunzio’s house are by guided 25-minute tour only (in Italian, every 10 minutes). The Museo della Guerra (War Museum) records d’Annunzio’s WWI antics – one of his most triumphant and more bizarre feats was to capture a battleship from the fledgling Yugoslavia shortly after WWI, when Italy’s territorial claims had been partly frustrated in postwar peace talks. In July and August, classical concerts,…
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Casa Museo Boschi-Di Stefano
Milan’s best collection of 20th-century Italian painting is not proudly displayed in a purpose-built soaring white box. Somewhat tellingly, it’s crowded salon-style in a Piero Portaluppi-designed 1930s apartment that still has the appearance of the haute-bourgeois home it once was. It’s a heady art hit, with Boccioni’s dynamic brushstrokes propelling painting towards Futurism, the nostalgically metaphysical Campigli and De Chirico, and the restless, expressionist Informels all occupying a small space. Don’t miss the double-header of ''concetti spaziali'' (spacialist experiments) from Milan’s most important midcentury artists Fontana and Manzoni. The provocative slashed…
reviewed
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Fondazione Prada
The Fondazione Prada produces two grand-scale, solo shows each year in an old warehouse that’s impressive enough to give you ‘art butterflies’ on its own. The likes of Anish Kapoor and Louise Bourgeois, or mid-career mavericks such as Francesco Vezzoli and Nathalie Djurberg, do the space justice. Tours of the foundation’s {{book-poi|9781741049947|1458138|new space}} ([tel] 02 535 70 9201; Largo Isarco 2; [hrs] by appointment; [metro] Lodi), due to open in 2011, are held periodically. A wander in the world’s most impressive stock room is worth the trip alone, but the official attraction is Rem Koolhaas’ obsessively detailed maquettes and 2D renderings of the former brandy…
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Hangar Bicocca
To the north-east of the city centre is this stunning, multipurpose exhibition space of Hangar Bicocca, in a vast industrial site that once was the heart of the Pirelli company’s operations. Its smartly curated temporary shows are certainly worth a look, but the big, and we mean big, attraction is a permanent installation by German artist Anselm Kiefer. The seven concrete-and-lead towers of The Seven Heavenly Palaces are a teetering 15m tall, tucked under the dark blue canopy of the 7000-sq-metre space. The precarious, ruined shells invoke the mythical, mystical yearning of their title as well as the abject destruction of postwar Europe.
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Prometeo Gallery
First up is the Prometeo Gallery specialising in screen-based art. Further on, the multilevel gallery Massimo de Carlo is entered via a bridge that gives a full view of the stockroom innards. This Via Ventura pioneer is a must-see, for the stellar line-up of artists - Diego Perrone, Simone Berti, Pei-Ming Yan - as well as the architecturally thoughtful space. In the same complex is the ever-challenging Zero and Art Book Milano. Via Massimiano is home to Francesca Minini and Klerkx, both showing intriguing new-generation work.
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Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa
If you’ve ever contemplated the long desert drive to Marfa, Texas to see the work of American sculptor Dan Flavin, a metro trip to the end of the green line won’t seem like too much of an effort. The suburban Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa, an airy 1930s church, contains his last work, designed shortly before his death in 1996. The arrangement of red, yellow and blue fluorescent lights across the altar, apse and transept is a subtle work - the life and clutter of an everyday church goes on beneath it - but its mix of the formal and the emotional is all the more powerful for its setting.
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Basilica di Sant’Andrea
The elaborate baroque cupola of Basilica di Sant’Andrea lords it over the city. Designed by Leon Battista Alberti in 1472, it safeguards a much-disputed relic: golden vessels said to hold earth soaked by the blood of Christ. Longinus, the Roman soldier who speared Christ on the cross, is said to have scooped up the earth and buried it in Mantua after leaving Palestine. Today, these containers rest beneath a marble octagon in front of the altar and are paraded around the town in a grand procession on Good Friday. There is no dispute about the tomb of Andrea Mantegna, also inside the basilica.
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New Space (Fondazione Prada)
The Fondazione Prada produces two grand-scale, solo shows each year in an old warehouse that’s impressive enough to give you ‘art butterflies’ on its own. The likes of Anish Kapoor and Louise Bourgeois, or mid-career mavericks such as Francesco Vezzoli and Nathalie Djurberg, do the space justice. Tours of the foundation’s new space, due to open in 2011, are held periodically. A wander in the world’s most impressive stock room is worth the trip alone, but the official attraction is Rem Koolhaas’ obsessively detailed maquettes and 2D renderings of the former brandy factory’s brave new future.
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Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio
St Ambrose, Milan’s patron saint and one-time superstar bishop, is buried in the crypt of the mainly 11th-century Romanesque Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio, which he founded in AD 379. It’s a fitting legacy, built and rebuilt with a purposeful simplicity that is truly uplifting: the seminal Lombard Romanesque basilica. Shimmering altar mosaics and a biographical AD 835 gilt altarpiece light up the shadowy vaulted interior. Along the south aisle, there’s some precious 5th-century sparkle. Mosaics adorn the ''Sacello San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro'', its ‘golden sky’ dome supported by winged monkeys and griffins.
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Sancarlone
It was in Arona (population 14,370), 20km south of Stresa, that the son of the Count of Arona and Margherita de’ Medici, who would go on to become San Carlo Borromeo (1538–84), was born. His birthplace, the Rocca Borromea castle, was later destroyed by Napoleon. But Arona’s saint is far from forgotten: in addition to a church and several chapels, the hill dedicated to him bears the revered religious monument, Sancarlone. Erected between 1614 and 1698, the 35m bronze-and-copper statue can be climbed, affording a spectacular view from the top.
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Teatro alla Scala
The austere facade of Milan’s legendary opera house, Teatro alla Scala (La Scala) seems at odds with its sumptuous six-tiered interior, all chandeliers and scarlet-silk-lined private boxes. The disparity came about because at the time it was built in 1778, it was on a narrow street blocked by houses, making it impossible to admire the facade in any case. These have since been demolished to create the square out front, Piazza della Scala, revealing the underwhelming frontage.
Attending a performance is incredible. Otherwise, you can peek inside as part of a visit to the in-house Museo Teatrale alla Scala, provided there are no performances or rehearsals in progress. On…
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Cattedrale
Cremona’s stately Cattedrale started out as a Romanesque basilica, but by the time it was finished in 1190, it was heavily overtaken by Gothic modishness. The main facade also bears some distinct Renaissance touches, in keeping with paintings of the same period by such masters as Boccaccio Boccaccino, Giulio Campi and Gian Francesco Bembo. For some, the remnants of earlier frescoes, uncovered during work in the early 1990s, will be more intriguing. They include a vast scene of the Crucifixion above the central doorway.
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Studio Museo Achille Castiglioni
Architect, designer and teacher Achille Castiglioni was one of Italy’s most influential 20th-century thinkers. This is the studio where he worked daily until his death in 2002, and the hour-long tours vividly illuminate his intelligent but playful creative process. Details abound; job folders printed with specially produced numerical stamps reach to the ceiling, scale models of his Hilly sofa for Cassina decorate a drawing table and a host of inspirational objects from joke glasses to bicycle seats await discovery.
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Livia Simoni Library
Harlequin costumes and a spinet inscribed with the command ‘Inexpert hand, touch me not!’ hint at centuries of Milanese musical drama, on and off stage. Portraits show Rossini apparently chatting up patrons, while Verdi seems troubled by mixed reviews, and Callas, ever the goddess, rises above it all. Your visit can include a glimpse of the theatre’s famed interior from a box and a backstage tour if you don’t clash with rehearsal time. The museum’s Livia Simoni Library beckons buffs who want more.
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Teatro la Scala Musuem
Harlequin costumes and a spinet inscribed with the command ‘Inexpert hand, touch me not!’ hint at centuries of Milanese musical drama, on and off stage. Portraits show Rossini apparently chatting up patrons, while Verdi seems troubled by mixed reviews, and Callas, ever the goddess, rises above it all. Your visit can include a glimpse of the theatre’s famed interior from a box and a backstage tour if you don’t clash with rehearsal time. The museum’s Livia Simoni Library beckons buffs who want more.
reviewed
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Palazzo Reale
Empress Maria Theresa’s favourite architect Giuseppe Piermarini gave this old town hall and Visconti palace a neoclassical overhaul in the late 18th century. Its supremely elegant interiors were all but destroyed by WWII bombs; the Sala delle Cariatidi remains unrenovated as a grim reminder of war’s indiscriminate destruction. The palazzo has a small permanent art collection, but brings in the crowds with blockbuster shows from artists as diverse as Balla, Bacon and Vivienne Westwood.
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Monastery of Santa Caterina del Sasso
The Monastery of Santa Caterina del Sasso is one of the most spectacularly located places in northern Italy. Clinging to the high rocky face of this southeast shore of Lake Maggiore, about 13km north of Angera, it is reached by a spiralling stairway (a lift is being built too) from 60m above. The church is actually the cobbling together of a series of 13th- and 14th-century chapels to form an oddly shaped whole, and is filled with a carnival of frescoes.
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