Milan, Italy

Domodossola isn’t really too much of a tourist town so Milan is the first real Italian city I’ve visited and it is…quite Italian. The 4th century churches, gothic architecture, dirty metro, liberal traffic flows, and “free” trams are just some of the highlights of the city. There are so many beautiful churches that even if you get the names mixed up you’d still end up with delightful architecture.

The 15th century Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio was one of my first points of interest as its architecture is quite varied. The Catholic University of the Sacred Heart has a wonderful columned courtyard with arches trimming the edges of the square. The church complex is a collection of an oratory and two churches, which, mind you, close for lunch. A typical square Italian-style tower is on one end of one of the churches making it picturesque for photos. The marble-clad temple of victory sitting opposite the police station has great chilled murals on the side of it, it’s just a pity that it’s closed to visitors.

At the Duomo di Milano, there is a great big square that hosts a cheap tourist trap version of a Christmas market during Christmas. Seriously, everything apart from the food is Chinese products from Alibaba or Aliexpress marked up by 1,000% of their original cost. Look, don’t even bother touching. The church itself has been desecrated as it has been turned into a profit-earning machine for the state – you need to pay to go inside a Church – the only other place where I’ve seen such sacrilege is at the Berliner Dom.

I’m all for an orderly queue to go inside a holy place of worship, but to pay to get into a house of God is simply unacceptable. If it were to become a fee-charging museum with those willing to pay for a fast pass skipping the queue, the building should not be marketed as a church, but rather as a significant historical building with wonderful architecture. That’s when I was reminded that it was built as a Catholic Church, which makes everything understandable.

The large galleria next to the church is the Galleria Vittoro Emanuelle II famous for its glass roof and upscale shopping. I don’t even know how this high-maintenance building still makes money, most people just walk over the mosaics to take a picture of its high atrium and glass roof without doing any shopping. I suppose the Italians must have their economy figured out.

If I could change anything about the trip it has to be advance planning. Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper is painted on a wall in a building next to a church, but you should book at least two weeks in advance to get an appointment to see it.