Milan is a big city. A city that will empty you. You are hit by the urban punch of cars, trams, subways, streets, pedestrians, tourists, chancers, bums, tat-sellers, fine women and gorgeous men the second you poke your head into its grey skies.
Pallid, sooty ochre and fuchsia buildings line the streets. Precarious balconies overhang the old cobble pavements that meander below. Down the road palatial banks emerge ominously from the meandering ancient streets. Columned and overbearing, they stand as the bastions of Italian bureaucracy. You can picture yourself sat in its marbled hallways shuffling from seat to seat, to get page upon page stamped by unyielding moustachioed men, and heavy set, unhappy women.
In the heart of the city Africans drape your arms with little pieces of string telling you that it’s for good luck. I can’t work out whether that’s to prevent them robbing you later, but I’m sure to find out soon enough.
Placed in prime positions to accost the wave of tourists that flood the city, they’re weaved into the fabric of the Piazza del Duomo. Plagued by camera flashes and pigeons, the square before the impressive cathedral is a rather bleak expanse and, much like the central spots in all the big cities, devoid of real life.
Whilst the church itself is a true spectacle, it’s lost in the mire of the city and country that surrounds it. Over 600 years in the making, it has seen generations of architects, builders, pilgrims, politicians, beggars, saints and sinners, pass through its gargantuan doors, and has grown atop their bones.
To this day the Duomo is still not finished. It’s speckled in idle scaffolding and emblazoned with adverts from the likes of Samsung and a Serbian bank. Speaking to the average Italian, that’s not because the church is incomplete, it’s because it’s Italian.
Murmuring under the sheets are the malcontent. Those who see a beautiful country, rich in illustrious history, squashed under the thumb of corruption. The church isn’t finished because there are companies whose interests lie in ensuring that it isn’t. Feet-dragging and money-wringing are the de facto modes of business in this country; a country gripped by the nameless men of power that protect their own interests above everything else. It seems ludicrous to imagine that in this modern age a first world country can still be so retrograde, but things get left outside of doors in the middle of night to keep those murmurs as quiet as they are. And more radical voices are publicly and dramatically disposed of to ensure that those things placed outside of doors remain effective. So things stay the same.
I’ve never quite understood the attraction to attractions. Derived the same word that we use to describe how a beautiful partner looks – how the flowers court the bees – it conjures feelings of love and satisfaction. It offers the hopes of a life content, where sweet embraces are met with the bracing pains of an untold future.
What these places offer is an insight into the vacuous nature of human beings. The gold trinket, emerald eyed people. Watch wearers. Heel admirers. Preened eyebrows and mini mint cigarettes.
The people for whom the city Milan is seemingly built.
When you’ve navigated your way from the city centre you might come across the old town of Brera. A strip and its draping tendrils containing the ‘authentic’ Italian experience. That’s if the authentic Italian experience is a smattering of restaurants selling stock favourites and expensive beers.
Once I’ve peered into a couple of galleries requiring judicial access, I find my sweaty feet and scowling face peering down the Quadrilatero della moda.
A jaunt in this area will tell you precisely why it’s the fashion haven than has celebrities from around the planet flocking. This is a den of pure affluence. A catastrophic monument to the greedy, self important nature of the industry, and a promenade that will leave the conscious a degree more braindead.
With yellow brick buildings housing the latest drapery, the paths outside are trundled by the full cheeked blondes and their sour dough eyes. Men with hair cuts gently sculpted to suit their jaw lines. Turtlenecked elbow bag hangers dripped and dipped in jewels, they peer from window to window at the hugely expensive watches and latest panther shaped silver rings from Cartier.
A riverless city, Milan sits on the banks of money. It thrives on its reputation and consecrates its culture to the gods of greed.
Don’t get me wrong, fashion is certainly a form of culture, but it’s culture at its most fickle. A disparaging celebration of wealth, it thrives on the malignant desire to turn one’s self into art. It’s the reason social media is a deluge of statuesque selfies and well practised poses. It’s an attempt to create a sense of permanence which is otherwise spurned by fleeting admiration and short attention spans. Milan is a gilded idol flush with cash and
Being thrown around the trams and the subway, dodging the cars and the buses,