The Duomo Milano

When I got to Milan, I took the subway from the train station to a stop near the Duomo--the city cathedral.  The Duomo is one of the most iconic sites of the city.  It is a giant, magnificent, white, gothic cathedral, that is covered in lacy spires and turrets, with hundreds of statues of saints and angels covering the building.  It is a beautiful building and it is a dramatic sight, when coming around a corner in to the plaza, and seeing the Duomo across the square.  If you click here, there is a really impressive picture of the Duomo from the top of one of the nearby buildings on a stormy day.  It looks like a spooky castle in a movie.  It also gives you an idea of some of the details on the church and on the sheer size of the marble blocks that were used to build the facade.  Notice how each of the spires has a figure standing on top of it.

The building was begun in 1386 and officially became a church in 1577, after almost two hundred years of construction.  It is staggering to think that it took the people of Milan almost the same amount of time to build a church as it has been since the U.S. was created until now.  That is a pretty impressive sense of focus.  What is even more astounding, though, is that it wasn't completed as you see it now, with all of the crenelations and gates, until 1965.  That is a building process of 579 years!  You can see some in-process pictures of the Duomo, as well as a list of all 77 of the architects that have been in charge of building for the last six centuries if you go here.  The building looks a lot different without the white, spiky facade.

There were loads of tourists around, especially because, if you are the kind of person who appreciates bright, hot, sunny, Mediterranean weather, it was a gorgeous day.  One of the most shocking things about Italy, to me, was the amount of bare skin around.  This may have been a function of the tourists (people are always complaining about the inappropriate dress of tourists) but I think it was also just because it was so much warmer than up North--it is more fun to wear skimpy outfits, I imagine, when it is 100 degrees and sunny than when it is 70 degrees and cloudy and breezy.  The Duomo is a Catholic church, however, and sunny weather or not, they had very strict dress codes.  While standing in line, there were loads of signs saying "no shorts", "no short skirts", "no sleeveless shirts".  All of the guidebooks also include the same warnings about visiting cathedrals and churches, but there were still people who weren't allowed in, while I was waiting in line, and other folks were zipping off to buy t-shirts or scarves to cover up their shoulders so that they could get in.

There were lots of signs saying people needed to behave well, including not sitting on the steps.

Flash cameras weren't allowed inside the cathedral, so almost none of my interior photos turned out but if you go to this website, you can take a look at some very pretty pictures of the interior.  I thought that the floor tiles looked like they ought to be made into a quilt design.  I like the tri-color look.

It was a bit complicated to even get into the Duomo.  You could buy a ticket to get inside the building at the front door, but to get onto the roof, you had to go to a ticket kiosk across the street from the back-side of the cathedral and then had to go back into the church through a little, tiny back door.

You can see the tiny little ticket kiosk in the angle of this government building, with the Italian flag hanging on it.  When I took the picture, I was standing beside the cathedral.

One of the windows on the backside of the Duomo.

The Duomo is currently being restored.  In an attempt, I assume, to be more aesthetically pleasing, they have large mesh coverings over some of the scaffolding.  However, it seems like having giant computer ads on the side kind of defeats the purpose.

Here you can see the impressive amount of scaffolding that surrounds the tallest pinnacle of the Duomo.  This is from the roof, looking around one of the flying buttresses that help to support the cathedral. 

To visit the official, English language version of the Duomo Milan website, go here.  It is a pretty interesting website and it includes loads of historical information and photographs on everything from the marble quarries where they got the stones for the facade, to an explanation of the iconography displayed inside the cathedral.  

I did find a video that show the Duomo.  This video is a quick one minute overview.  It is pretty basic but it does have some pretty interesting information about the building.

Walking Through Milan

The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Milan was that it was very, very, very hot.  When I had left the Netherlands, it was in the low 70s.  During my entire week in the south, the temperatures where in the 90s and even in the 100s.  It made for a shocking transition.  The second thing that I noticed was that I was very, very, very allergic to something that was blooming down there.  By the time I found the bus to go from the Milan Airport to Milano Centrale--the main train station in Milan, I was having a terrible allergy attack and, besides being very hot, was very miserable.  If I seem unduly negative about Italy and Italians, please note that it may be more a reflection of heat exhaustion and terrible allergic reactions than a reflection of the actual culture of the place.  Although I did get attacked by more street people in Italy than in any other place I visited . . . 

This map shows the main things I saw while walking through Milan.  I have created a map with markers on Google maps.  If you click here you can see the street view of the city and can zoom in and look at the surrounding areas.

When I got to the central train station, I took the metro to the Duomo stop.  After I toured the Duomo, I walked back to the station in a round-about way, checking out various things on the way.  It was about two miles from the Duomo to the Centrale station but that is a really long way when it is practically 100 degrees out.

Periodically, around the city, there were public fountains.  Like lots of places in Europe, the water is potable and with the weather being so warm, loads of people were hanging around getting drinks, watering their dogs, filling water bottles, taking quick sponge baths (I kid you not).  Just FYI, Italians do not stand in lines well.  Coming from the Netherlands, where people stood in neat, well-spaced, orderly lines, it took a bit of getting used to.  Eventually, I was hot enough and thirsty enough to do the "shoulder your way to the front of the group" technique that seems to be the Italian modus operandi.  I wasn't quite brash enough to fend off the very sweaty, partially clad jogger who, literally, shoved me aside to get to the water fountain while gesticulating wildly and swearing (or possibly just chatting--it is kind of hard to tell in Italian).  But I did get to get water shortly after that.

The Last Big Trip

The last big trip I took while I was in the Netherlands was south, to Italy and Albania.  It was very cheap--the flight from the Netherlands to Milan was only about $15 each way and the train tickets were very reasonable.  Also, since I took night trains and ferries most of the time, I saved loads on hotels.  I had been looking forward to seeing Albania for about 15 years, so this was a trip I was very excited to take.

• I flew from Eindhoven, in the Netherlands to Milan, Italy on Saturday.  
• I wandered around the city for an afternoon, and then took the night train from Milan to Rome, where I arrived early Sunday morning.  
• I checked out the city for a few hours and then took a train from Rome to Bari--a port city on the Adriatic. 
• From Bari, I took an overnight ferry across the Sea to Durrës--an Albanian port city.  
• Then I took a train from Durrës to Tirana--Albania's capital city--where I stayed for a day.  
• Then I returned to Italy, via the train to Durrës and another overnight ferry back to Bari.  
• From Bari, I took a bus across country to Naples.  
• In Naples, I took the regional train system (which is separate from the national train system) to Pompei, where I stayed overnight and checked out the ruins.
• Then I headed back to Rome, where I took a night train back to Milan, just in time to catch the plane back to Eindhoven.

It made for a very busy and hectic week (and also a bit warm, as I was visiting at the beginning of the summer, in mid-June) but I am glad that got to do it.  I saw a lot of things that I had wanted to see for a long time and it provided an interesting comparison between the cultures of Southern and Northern Europe.