The Giardini Pubblici

While I was walking through Milan, from the Duomo to the Centrale station, I walked through the Giardini Pubblici--the Milan public gardens.  It was extremely restful.  Having spent hours walking through city streets, or standing on top of a giant building, in triple digit heat, it was very pleasant to be in some green space.  It was also markedly cooler.  I sat on a bench in the shade for a while and then walked on to another one, a ways away, because a very affectionate teenage couple sat down across from me and a very old, very groady old man, sat down next to me and stared creepily at them.

If you go here, you can see a very detailed history of the building of the park.  It is in Italian, but if you use Google Chrome, when you open the webpage, you can click the translate button at the top and it is pretty easy to read, although the print is quite small.



There were a loads of statutes all over the place.


This statue, in the Piazza Cavour, is just outside one of the entrances to the Gardens is a statue of Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour.  Cavour served as Prime Minister of the united kingdom of Italy under Victor Emanuel II and was a significant force in the creation of the united Italy.  He died a few months after accomplishing this.  Interestingly enough, like George Washington, overly enthusiastic bleeding was a contributing factor to his death.

Cavour is standing on the top of the pillar and the lady at the bottom represents the goddess Fame, who is writing Cavour's name on the pillar with her finger.

This is a political cartoon from the time which shows Cavour and Garibaldi cobbling Italy together from scratch.

This gold statue is of Indro Montanelli, an Italian journalist and historian during the 20th century.  He was imprisoned and condemned to death by the Nazis during World War II but was snuck out of prison and into Switzerland, saving his life. Montanelli used to sit in the park, which was near his office and, in 1977, he was shot four times in the legs by some members of the Communist Youth organization, the Red Brigades.  After he died in 2001, they renamed the park in his honor and built this statue right near where he was shot.

This is a statue of Antonio Rosmini, an Italian theologian and philosopher.

Lemon trees in the garden

The pretty gates around the Garden.

If you click here, you can go to the Wikipedia page for the Garden.  It includes a video of the Garden Zoo from the '70s.  The animals looked kind of sad and like they were in tiny little cages.  The zoo is closed down now and most of the buildings have been torn down.

There was also a restaurant in the park, where you could sit and eat.  It was kind of a cafeteria set-up and there were lots of things to choose from.  It looked like a lot of fun.

As I was just walking out of the gardens, there was a huge swarm of Italian police that came roaring into the park.  I don't know what happened or what the problem was but there were at least a dozen cop cars.  I was just as happy to be escaping before whatever it was went down.

This is where, unfortunately, I have to admit a huge failing as an aunt.  Apparently, there is a large collection of very interesting dinosaur statues in the Gardens and I totally missed them.  I did, however, find some pictures of them and it looks like the display is pretty terrific, even including a Tyrannosaurus Rex that is half-way through eating a little Triceratops.  (If you click here, and click through, the next few pictures are all dinosaurs.)