The Lombard Italians: Milan and Turin with Michael and Dan
Daniel Emberley, September 2019
The last time we were in Italy was 2001, when we did tourist-typical Rome-Florence-Venice. We’d heard rumors of a whole other Italy, a place of near-German efficiency where museums re-open after siesta. And the food is just as good, if not better. This time we traveled through Milan, Turin, and Lago Maggiore.
Wednesday, September 18
Lufthansa took us from Dulles to Frankfurt, then easily on to Malpensa, Milan’s international airport. It is about as far from the city as Dulles is from D.C., but an express train whisked us downtown in less than an hour.
We arrived on the first day of Fashion Week. That was an error, I usually try to schedule our vacations for their off-season. We got a good view of photo-shoot craziness as our cab took us east from Cadorna Station to the Dateo neighborhood. Michael had arranged an AirBnB on Via Archimedes, a quiet area a half hour’s walk from downtown. Our travel-tired brains picked up keys at one place, found the actual building, then had to identify which of twenty unmarked apartments was ours. After dragging our bags to the top floor, we got a text saying it was on the ground floor. Unit was large, assembled from smaller apartments, with a good-sized kitchen and washing machine. We never figured out how to open the security shades on the bedroom windows, but they blocked noise as well as light, so not a burden. We got lunch at a Chinese-run Italian sandwich place then hiked downtown to the Duomo.
I like to use our first, jet-lagged day to see a big thing that we don’t have to think about too much. Milan’s cathedral was perfect. Admission is confusing; you need to find the ticket office behind the Duomo, then pick a ticket which gives you a number (like at the Registry of Motor Vehicles) to go to a counter and buy your actual ticket. Which comes in a variety of flavors, with different attractions included. We eventually gave up hanging out in the gift shop waiting for our number to be called and used one of the automated machines, got the Combo 5 Pack, and walked around the piazza to the elevator to the roof.
The roof of the Duomo is a thing of beauty. Stairs take you up and down levels through a forest of stone pinnacles, saints, and portals crowned with Bible scenes. The views over the city are fantastic. At the end of the path you descend to the cathedral, an enormous room of columns and stained glass. The Duomo was only finished in 1965, but following the original Gothic plans throughout. Side chapels did not make an impression, but the rock crystal encoffined body of St. Ambrose, patron saint of Milan, did. There were archaeological ruins under the cathedral from Roman times included in our combo ticket, so we walked through.
But honestly, we were exhausted; we retreated to the McDonalds across the Piazza to recover with large Diet Cokes. We walked back to the apartment, getting ourselves used to the city and our neighborhood. Got euros at a cash machine, breakfast food at a supermarket, and tram tickets at a tobacconist’s. Michael had the good idea to photograph the map of trams that went to our closest stop, which was a life saver over the next week. Back at the apartment we slept for fourteen hours.
Thursday, September 19
The mattress at the apartment was mediocre, but we were so exhausted that we slept through and woke rested. We took the tram downtown, which was amazingly easy. Milan has a great subway system, but it is still being constructed through our neighborhood. Instead, trams run frequently, rapidly, and in dedicated lanes so deal better with traffic than any alternative. Most transit in Milan is run by the same company, so the tickets we bought worked on all of them for the same flat rate. Best of all, one need not hunt down a tobacco shop (that was old-school of us), but can buy tickets at machines in any subway station.
The Museo del Novecento is in Fascist Art Deco buildings on the Piazza del Duomo. I’d expected it to be lame, but it houses a good collection of 20th Century art, with an emphasis on Italians. The Marino Marinis and Lucio Fontanas we expected, and lots of Futurist work from the Mussolini era. Good installations, interactive, and kinetic work from the ‘60’s. Lots of artists we’d never heard of, including Remo Bianco, whose cast works in rubber and gold leaf on canvas we liked a lot. A most excellent art historical quote: “Landscape is for the Middle Classes”. It’s even more condescending in Italian.
Across the street is superlative department store La Rinascente. We had lunch in one of their rooftop cafes: lasagna, club sandwich, a caprese with prosciutto, all with a lovely view of the Duomo. Our combo ticket from yesterday got us into the Palazzo Reale’s Museo del Duomo. Lots of sculptures and art that has been removed from the cathedral for preservation or replication, with the originals stored here. Great wooden working model of the Duomo, and the original Madonna statue that rules over Milan from the steeple. A side chapel left over from when this was the royal palace just lovely. Bizarrely, the museum insists on the same silence/decorum as if we were in the cathedral. And announces the same over loud speakers regularly. The Palazzo had a temporary show of Pre-Raphaelite painting, work we had seen last year in England, so we skipped for a coffee and cheesecake break on the Piazza.
San Carlo Borromeo was a member of one of the ruling families and a cardinal of Milan in the 1500’s, when running a diocese meant running the whole community. He helped lead the Counter Reformation. They LOVE him in Milan. In addition to running the city well, he donated family art and books as the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. Caravaggio’s fruit basket, Raphael’s original drawing for “The School of Athens”, da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus and a stunning portrait of a man, Jan Brueghels. Lots of Venetian paintings, and a library that is as architecturally interesting as the holdings are rich. We were not able to get tickets to see the “Last Supper” across town at Santa Marie delle Grazie, but the Ambrosiana has a life-size copy made only a couple of years after da Vinci painted it, when the Milanese realized it was already flaking off. Francesco Hayez is the most important Milanese painter of the 19th Century; he ran the painting Academy at the Brera, and the Ambrosiana has an entire gallery of his Romantic-era portraits.
We caught a tram back to the apartment, changed, and returned to Piazza del Duomo and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. This was built in the 1860’s to connect the Duomo with La Scala, a major step in retail architecture. Cast iron supports a glass roof over two streets that cross under a domed ceiling, the floors paved in mosaics that recognize the city states then merging into a united Kingdom of Italy. Still a home of top brands, although the clientele seemed to be mainly tourists.
Why go to Milan if you can’t see a show at La Scala? Michael is not big on opera, and I did not expect they would supertitle the performances since hey, most of them were originally written and are sung in Italian. The ballet also performs there, however, so we had tickets for “Giselle”, a piece we had never seen danced. First act has German peasants performing for nobility who behave badly, in the second act white-dressed virgins punish the nobles by dancing them to their deaths. A bitter flavor of Romanticism, but gorgeous. The expensive seats are in what we call the orchestra, so we found ourselves in the back of a box, but with a decent view of the performance. A nice usher shifted us so we could sit together, and being in the back of a box meant we could stand during the performance, which was great. The lobby spaces are overdone Neo-classical, with magnificent balcony views over the piazza. We walked back through the Galleria and Piazza del Duomo admiring the buildings lit for the night, with an excellent view of the Martini Building (Angie Dickinson singing about Martini & Rossi on the rocks? Them.) on our way to the tram stop and home.
Friday, September 20
We’d been in Milan three days and still not seen their big art museum. This may be a record for me. We caught the 12 tram to the Pinacoteca di Brera north of the Duomo. It’s a former Jesuit college that Napoleon turned into one of the world’s great collections. Their gracious courtyard is dominated by a Canova statue of Napoleon holding a diminutive Nike (the goddess of victory, not the sneaker). The art school and several scientific academies have space here, but tourists go up grand stairs to the second floor, where galleries surround the courtyard. Mainly Italian, the canvases go from early Renaissance to Hayez and the Victorian-realist Macchiaioli school. Lots of Lombard paintings, which are hard to see outside the region, a killer Crivelli, Caravaggio, Raphael, Mantegna, Boccioni. Thrilling and exhausting, we recovered over lunch of pizza, salad, spinach, and a gelato sundae at an al fresco restaurant around the corner.
The Museo Risorgimento is housed in the 1775 Palazzo Moriggia next to the Brera; we went as much for the palace as the collection. The Risorgimento happened during our Civil War; it was the creation of modern Italy out of city states controlled by the rightfully unloved militaries of Austria and Spain. Museums dedicated to the topic expect only Italian visitors, and their mission is patriotic and didactic. Like a high school trip to D.C. to see the monuments and Mount Vernon. Not a lot of English translation, but we knew the history from our reading (Michael cheers for the Hapsburgs, I take the side of Italian patriots), so were able to fake it. Giant history paintings of battles and hagiographic portraits of the Royal House of Savoy and patriots Cavour and Mazzini. My favorite is Garibaldi, who fought for South American independence and lived on Staten Island before returning to force the Savoy to accept cities as he liberated them.
Parco Sempione fills the old Sforza gardens behind the Castello, a nice green space with fairly formal gardens. It is dominated on the north by the Arco della Pace, commissioned by Napoleon but inaugurated by the Hapsburg emperor who defeated him. We headed straight to the Triennale/Palazzo dell’ Arte. This Fascist-Deco expo hall once held major Milan design shows, which now happen at the expo center at Rho Milano. A museum of Italian modern design fills the space. A good collection, but a lot of stuff we’ve seen, and sometimes owned, before. Always fun to see Olivetti typewriters and Memphis furniture, but no new ideas. Nice café overlooking the park and gardens.
Milan uses Castello Sforzesco for a mixed bag of museums. We’d picked up a Milano City Museum pass at the Museo Novocento that let us skip between these. The castle itself is a medieval foundation built by the Visconti that the Sforzas expanded. The layout is confusing, with multiple entrances giving access to different collections at different times. We started with Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pieta. His last sculpture, this is an unfinished work of great power, in a bit of stables by itself with videos offering interpretation. The classical/antiquities collection was also hosting a show on Leonardo da Vinci; the galleries weren’t able to do justice to both, and it was hard to tell what was part of the interactive show and what was Roman sculpture that curators worked around. Da Vinci had been hired by the Sforzas to strengthen this palace and work on the fortifications and canals of Milan, so it was appropriate that the show was here. There is a magnificent tapestry of St. Ambrose and his whip on display (St. Ambrose is like the Barbara Stanwyck of the Catholic pantheon). It is at least 25 feet high, and would have been paraded around the city for festivals. The Pinacoteca had lots of work that would have been impressive in America, but here was second tier. Some good Mantegna and da Vinci, and a great Bronzino portrait. Accessed through the Pinacoteca, but technically separate with different hours, was the decorative arts collection. This is great, but we were forced to rush through due to timing.
A short walk south of the Castello is San Maurizio al Monastero Maggiore. This is two churches joined at the altar, one public, the other for nuns of the adjacent convent. It is famous for its frescoes by Bernadino Luini, a student of da Vinci. Absolutely stunning. I thought it was hyperbole when guide books called it “the Sistine Chapel of the north”, but honestly, that fits. Wall frescoes tell more Bible stories than I thought existed, beautifully painted and preserved.
The Basilica Sant Ambrogio is a ten-minute walk south; it is one of four major basilicas founded in Milan by St. Ambrose. A great example of Romanesque architecture, with nice mosaics and a lovely forecourt and gardens, but not much to see inside.
We ate gelato and hung out in the gardens with neighborhood kids until it was late enough for restaurants to start serving. It was my birthday, and Michael had found the historic Trattoria Milanese where he took me for dinner. We should have reserved, but were early enough that they were able to squeeze us in. Amazing service and food, tortellini with pumpkin and sage, pasta arrabiata, vitello tonatto, osso buco with risotto Milanese, carrots. Too much food for us to fit in dessert, sadly. We eventually learned that if we split one first course and one second course between us it would be plenty, and still leave room for dolce and coffee after. We went on a quest for a 12 tram stop, which we found south of the Duomo, and then back to the apartment.
Saturday, September 21
We were becoming comfortable with the 12 tram: down Corso XXII Marzo, through Piazza Cinque Giornate, past the Communist labor hall and the conservative Halls of Justice, Piazza San Babila and Piazza Fontana to the Duomo. Walked back through the Galleria to the twin palaces that house the Gallerie d’Italia on Piazza della Scala. This collection was created by banks who have opened it to the public; it runs from Canova sculpture through Italian history painters, Romantics, the Macchiaioli, Umberto Boccioni and the Futurists, Lucio Fontana and modern Italian artists to contemporary work. Lots of artists and work that was new to us, in stunning palace galleries.
Back through Piazza del Duomo to Jollibee, “Home of the Famous Chicken Joy”. We had been surprised at how international Milan was, not just at the rich end, but also among the working class. Lots of Asians and Africans, and, nursing Italian grandmothers we suspect of alienating their kids, Philippinas. Our sister-in-law May had told us about Jollibee, a fried chicken chain in Manila; this was our first chance to try it. Better than Kentucky Fried, but with fewer vegetables. Lovely gravy to go with all those extra carbs.
Milan has an excellent subway system that we had yet to try. We jumped onto the M1 at Duomo and changed to the M5 train at Lotto to get to Tre Tori. The “three towers” are skyscrapers that anchor a new urban neighborhood, Parco City Life. Insurance and software companies in the towers soar above a swooping World’s Fair-esque shopping mall, surrounded by housing complexes designed by Zaha Hadid, Arata Isozaki, and Daniel Libeskind. Less sterile than Tysons, but not as dynamic as a real city, either. The discount design store Flying Tiger Copenhagen gave us an excuse to shop, then we jumped back on the M5 to go to Isola.
We emerged from the Metropolitana into a street market, the usual off-brand clothes, stands of batteries, and fresh produce. Just south of Isola is Porta Nuova, a different new development squeezed up against Porta Garibaldi train station. The first structures are the Bosco Verticale, three residential towers covered ground to roof in greenery. Not like green walls, but entire trees, shrubs, and vines climbing balconies and terraces. They are designed to clean the air as well as provide housing; BBC Radio had a special report on them just last week. The buildings are cool, and stunning, rising above a new public park with a “tree library” of circles of trees, each circle a different variety. That park bridges railway tracks that had helped isolate Isola from the rest of Milan. We weren’t thrilled with the office buildings above Piazza Gae Aulenti; overall, it reminded us of Reston, but with a subway and style.
Just south of Porta Nuova in a converted movie theater is Eataly. The Slow Food Movement, an effort to connect people with where their food comes from and bring fresh and local produce back into our lives, started in Turin, but was quickly adopted in Milan as well. Eataly is a supermarket built around that ethos. The interior houses halls for the usual produce/dry goods/meat/fish, but also several restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. I really wanted to like it, but honestly, it was like a vertical Wegmans with the condescending attitude of a Whole Foods. Yes, the groceries were cool, but we could not figure out how to buy anything. Michael wanted a coffee, but between lines for check out, lines to get a ticket to order, then lines to pay for the same, we couldn’t master it.
We left on the M3 to San Ambrogio, walked up the Via de Amicis to the Corso di Porta Ticinese to the Basilica di San Lorenzo Maggiore. This church is famously round, ancient Roman, and full of mosaics. More important for its history than its art. Lovely colonnade of Roman columns enclosing a park before the building. A nice spot to stop for a diabetic-emergency four scoops of gelato while Michael hunted down a Diet Coke. Further south on the Corso to Sant’ Eustorgio. Again, layers of history in an historic church; St. Lawrence was martyred here on a hibachi. Next door the Archdiocese of Milan runs the Museo Diocesano. The Catholicism has had two thousand years to build and decorate, and stuff needs to get fixed and replaced. This museum houses the leftovers, some of which are fantastic. Tintoretto, Hayez, a drawing collection that competes with Morgan Library, working models for Lucio Fontana’s altarpieces. The highlight is the Portinari Chapel, a fine Florentine Renaissance chapel covered in frescoes by Vincenzo Foppa. I’d never heard of Foppa either, Lombard school, exquisite work, Google him. Down the street and back in an alley is a Roman arena that has been partially excavated and partly left as park.
We continued south through a second Porta Ticinese: the first of these was Roman, up by San Lorenzo, this one Napoleonic, both guarding the road to the Ticino River. Which was not convenient enough, so Ludovico Sforza had Leonardo di Vinci create canals to make Milan an inland port. The canals have been retrofitted into a restaurant/nightclub zone called the Navigli. A lovely late afternoon walk, but too early for dinner, so we hopped on the 9 tram back to Cinque Giornate. There was a cool renovated municipal market building at our tram stop at Santa Maria di Suffragio. It was split into four different shops selling both ingredients and prepared food. It was too early for the fish vendor to sell us calamari, but they did have prosecco, and the produce stand sold us a delicious veg plate of barley, mushrooms, pasta, and carrots for dinner. The bakery provided dolce, and we had a pleasant walk back to the apartment feeling that we had begun to get a sense for some of the neighborhoods.
Sunday, September 22
Today was a day of house museums. We started northwest through the Beaux Arts Piazza Eleanora Duse and passed the Art Nouveau Museum of Natural History. This section of the city, around the Giardini Indro Montanelli, houses the Villa Belgiojoso. This is where Napoleon lived when he ruled Milan, and his Austrian successor Count Radetzky. The grand Neo-classical palace houses the Galleria d’Arte Moderna. “Modern” means anything after 1800, and here starts with (more) Canova bas reliefs. The second floor shows Italian artists in chronological order up to WWI. The work is excellent, and the artists people we did not know. What makes an artist great? How important is their skill, and how much is due to being in collections that British and American art historians have easy access to? We had a similar thought at the National Gallery in Copenhagen, but it was more powerful here, where we kept seeing art that was clearly excellent and yet unpublished in our world. The third floor has two family collections, the Grassi and Vismara, that take art up to the 1960’s. We recognized more artists here: Boccioni, Fontana, Modigliani, Giacomo Balla, van Gogh, Manet, and Picasso. A whole corridor of Toulouse Lautrec. Lots of rooms of work at least as worthy as Sargent or Cassatt or anything at the old Corcoran Gallery. We left the museum to walk the grounds, but were told by the police guarding it that they are preserved for the children of Milan: one has to have a kid to pass into the gardens. Cool.
We walked northeast up the shopping streets of Corso Buenos Aires to the Casa-Museo Boschi di Stefano. This is an apartment in a stylish Art Deco building. The former residents collected 20th Century artists, and left their home to the city. They hung it like we hang ours, salon style with canvases on every bit of wall and funky sculptures on well-preserved 1950’s furniture. We loved it, it reminded us of Sir John Soanes in London. We walked around the corner to an unpretentious diner for lunch, vegetable salad, tortelloni with ham and cream, bresalao on arugula and parmesan. Most excellent. The waitress and her Mom love food, and were happy to see us enjoying it.
We took the subway from Lima to San Babila, then walked through the Quadrato d’Oro. This is where the great Milanese ateliers are located, lots of fashion houses and people dressed as if they are on a photo shoot. But mainly tourists. I bought Michael a pair of chicken-themed socks at Gallo, and we checked out the windows of Vetrerie di Empoli, a glass store on Via Montenapoleone. Fussy but impressive Venetian glass.
The Museo Poldi Pezzoli was only a few doors down from yesterday’s Gallerie d’Italia, but a world apart in collections and display style. The founder collected and designed his interiors between 1848 and 1879, in the family palazzo. Most of the rooms were damaged by WWII bombs, which gave an opportunity for some 20th Century updates, but the majority is Old Master paintings and decorative arts in a stuffy Victorian atmosphere. Like a darker version of Boston’s Gardner Museum. Botticelli, Mantegna, Bellini, Titian, in some truly fabulous room installations. A room of clocks, another of watches; one of stucco with putti dangling from the corners, because hey, why not? The armory was lost to the bombs, but reinstalled in Modern style by sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro. A fantastic spiral stair anchored by a carp-laden fountain, and a Hogwarts-like Arts and Crafts study dedicated to Dante, who rules over it in stained glass. Count Poldi-Pezzoli donated the palace and collections to Milan in 1870, when the city had no paradigm for accepting such a gift. He sounds amazing; in addition to collecting art he was an active participant in the Risorgimento, funding troops for the City of Milan and forced into exile by the Austrians as a result.
Location Four on our Milanese Tour of Homes was around the corner, the Museo Bagatti Valsecchi. Another family palace, the Bagatti Valsecchi were two brothers who collected decorative arts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. They were more than happy to have work recreated, duplicated, and entire interiors fabricated by Victorian artisans to make settings for their pieces. One brother married into the Borromeo family; descendants preserved their legacy until they donated the palace to a foundation in 1974. Michael liked the “shotgun palace” layout; unlike Poldi Pezzoli, this was easy to understand, long corridors that enclosed two courtyards with a grand ballroom between. I liked the installation of the pieces, with theme rooms clearly built around favorite pieces of furniture or found elements from other palaces or churches. A cool labyrinth built into a study ceiling, which could only be solved by following the poetry around it. The museum had invited contemporary artist Toni Zuccheri to install his glass poultry throughout, so there was a disjunctive element that was probably not an issue for regular visitors. Michael does love his chickens, so it worked. We wandered back to the Piazza del Duomo for coffee and a baba au rhum, then took the 60 tram back to the Mercato del Suffragio. This time we were late enough to be served, an amazing squid/shrimp Catalan, free-range Piedmont hamburger, pizza, and wine.
This was our last full day in Milan, so a good chance to consider the city. Located on a plain (otherwise those canals would not have worked), it is easy to walk around. Transport shows up on schedule and frequently, and places are open when they say they’re going to be. If there was a surprise when we got to a destination it was that they had an additional event happening, not that they were closed or under construction or otherwise inaccessible. The history is Medieval, Renaissance, and modern rather than ancient. The architecture is amazing, tons of Art Nouveau/Liberty courtyard apartment buildings held up by telemons and caryatids, interspersed with decent Modern and contemporary structures. They love their roof gardens, which we saw all over the city. While fashion is a major industry, there are lots of other reasons people are here, and it never dominated the way that government does D.C. People were kind, patient, and helpful without being condescending, their English infinitely better than our Italian. The population was much more mixed than we anticipated, from across continents, not just Europe. Lots of Chinese, but running delis and dry cleaners rather than Chinese restaurants. An entire world of contemporary art exists in Milan that we did not get to explore and would be worth a return visit.
Food? This is Italy, it was fantastic everywhere from fancy places to corner coffee shops. Coffee was difficult for Michael to decipher, definitely figure out your order before you get on a plane. Water is expected to come in a bottle, with or without fizz; hard to reconcile that bottle habit with the eco-consciousness they were spouting. Like other Italians they’re frugal with napkins, which are cheap, and the waiter will not bring the check until you force the issue. Less pasta than we expected, more rice and especially more bread. We laughed at the “coperto”, a ceremonial basket of bread that sits on every table and for which you pay a service fee in lieu of a tip, especially when a waiter brought the “real” bread that you were supposed to eat. Eating times are a little later than ours, but not crazy late like the Spanish; expect restaurants to be ready to serve by 7 or 7:30 p.m.
Monday, September 23
Monday in Milan is a complete waste of time. Even the Monumental Cemetery is closed, so unless you’re working there is little to do. We caught a 60 bus to Central Station and the express train (it eventually went to Geneva, very posh) to Lago Maggiore in the Alps. There are several Italian lakes; most of us know Como, if only because of George Clooney. Como, though, you sit in a boat and a guide tells you who’s villa you’re seeing the back of. Maggiore is amazing, it runs north into Switzerland and is enclosed by gorgeous views of the Alps on all sides. Our favorite Milanese family, the Borromeo, turned three islands near the town of Stresa into palace-gardens. As in, the whole of each island became the foundation for a palace with grounds attached. I could not wait to see these.
From Stresa train station it’s an easy ten-minute walk down the cliff to the lakeside park and ferry terminal. This is tricky to negotiate, not the walk, but the ferry companies. Stresa views tourists as a crop to be harvested, not helped. There are several competing ferry companies that vie for your business; despite our coaching by Rick Steves, we ended up the victim of a tour who sold us a day ticket for the “Lake Tours” company (known hereafter as the blue-and-yellow ferries). The issue is that these small companies will only take people who have bought their tickets, and they only swing around the islands once an hour, when they feel like it. So, you spend a lot of time sitting at docks wondering if this boat is yours. Hence the colors: the red-and-black boats don’t pick up blue-and-white or blue-and-yellow, and even when your colors arrive, they may be commandeered by affiliated tour companies who load only their people, so you’re left waiting until the next ferry. Tedious, and unnecessary. There is an official city ferry company that runs on a schedule, but the terminal for it is so far down the lakefront in Stresa that we never found it.
It was a drizzly morning, but the lake was glorious, with banks of clouds slowly burning out of the mountains to reveal towns and villas around us. The blue-and-yellow ferries run a circuit the opposite of most others, which worked in our favor in terms of crowds. First stop was Isola Madre, known more for its gardens than its palazzo. One plus of the private ferries is they’re usually medium-sized motor boats, so can run up the shore close to where you want to be. We hopped off, checked out the gift shop, and strolled up a hedged path to the ticket office. Buy the combo ticket, there is no way you are going all the way to Stresa and not seeing both Isola Madre and Isola Bella. It was maybe a forty-five minute walk around the perimeter of the island, although heathens could run it in fifteen. Fields surrounded by hedges or matched sets of trees, a Venetian gondola terminal, and in the center of the island a pavilion of exotic poultry. Guinea fowl, parakeets, vibrant pheasants, and white peacocks stroll the grounds, but cluster here where they’re housed and fed. There’s a giant Himalayan cypress, held up by guy wires after a severe storm a decade back. The walk ends at the palazzo proper, which was an after-thought for the Borromeos. It would be pretty stunning in McLean, but here was just an eh. No climate control, so the good stuff has been brought to Isola Bella or museums/palaces in town. Lots of dusty furniture and creepy mannequins that could be in an Ocean City fright house. An extensive collection of puppets and puppet theaters, many of which were created by designers from La Scala.
There is one restaurant on Isola Madre, pirate-themed, but most people get off at the next ferry stop, Isola Pescatore. The Borromeos let the locals stay on this one, and it is now full of restaurants designed for tourists to get lunch between the islands. Annoyed with the ferry system we decided to skip this stop and went on to Isola Bella. The Borromeos had not completely evicted the inhabitants. There is a small village of shops and restaurants near the ferry dock, so we chose wisely. We got one with a fire pit and sat alongside to dry off from being splashed at the dock. A good choice, salad with smoked salmon and roe, rigatoni arrabiata with squid, and a Lake specialty, tiny anchovies fried whole. These are like fish popcorn, and while the waiter raised his eyebrows when we Americans ordered them, we cleaned the plate.
Up the steps from the ferry is the main attraction, the Palazzo Borromeo. The Borromeos were around so long, and so intermarried, that they collected family symbols the way most of us collect scratches. The Sforza had a red fist, Visconti a blue snake swallowing a red person (eugh). The Borromeos rotated between three interlocking rings, a unicorn, a seated camel, and (my favorite oxymoron) the word “humility” capped with a gold crown. The grand staircase is encircled by the seals of families that ruled Italy, with their own prominently displayed. That’s just a teaser: the spaces are grand in a way only the Baroque style can manage, stuccoed and gilded spaces varying oversized rooms with double or even triple height rooms. When all that seems too heavy any window will refresh you with a view of the Lake and the Alps. The are some masterpiece Old Master paintings, but you’re here for the ensemble, not the art. After a gallery of Belgian tapestries you are deposited in the gardens. These rise in a pyramid shape through formal settings to a garden-fountain-theater, crowned by the Borromeo unicorn. Humility, indeed. British garden writer Monty Don uses this garden as the ultimate example of man controlling nature, one of the best examples of Baroque gardening. Because of the microclimate the southern slope of the Alps provides there are plants here that you would not expect, gingko, bamboo, even a California redwood. More of the famous white peacocks.
We shopped (they sell fragrant soap) and got a coffee and Magnum ice cream in the café, then exited through town to the ferry. An annoying hour-long wait as two tour groups took the first blue-and-yellow ferries that came, but then an easy walk uphill back to the train station in Stresa. We were glad we had not bought round trip tickets, as the machines were easy to figure out and I would have been panicking about making a specific departure. As it was we bought a ticket and two minutes later the same express from Geneva pulled in whisking us back to Milan in under an hour. From Central Station there was a 60 bus that took us right back to the apartment.
We celebrated our last night in Milan at il Giardino dei Segreti, a restaurant our hostess had recommended that was indeed excellent. Aperol spritz, ravioli with cream and zucchini, veal cutlet Milanese, a mixed grill of sausage, beef, lamb, and kidney, and broccoli. The non-coperto here was puffs of bread fresh from the grill, absolutely delicious.
Tuesday, September 24
We checked out of Via Archimedes and took the 60 bus back to Milano Centrale. The station is beautiful, opened in 1931, same time period as our Federal Triangle, but more bombastic. Also, in our favorite northern Italian way, efficient; we easily bought high-speed tickets for Turin from a machine and found our train, which departed exactly on schedule. It was only an hour to Turin’s Porta Nuova station – we should have waited, but weren’t sure where food would be available, so got sandwiches in the station. We found the tourist info center outside the station and bought our Torino-Piemonte cards. Unlike Milan, Turin sells a ticket that gets you into almost every cultural institution, and with an upgrade covers fare for all public transit. We got our money’s worth out of these. We hopped into the unmanned, single-line subway and rode it to Lingotto at the southern end. Checked into the NH Hotel, dropped our bags, and headed back downtown on the subway.
Giorgio, a friend of a friend, grew up here; when he heard we were going to Turin as tourists his first question was “Why?” Most Italians would agree; Turin is famous for being industrial, gritty, and unfashionably time-conscious. Their most known symbols are Fiat and the Juventus soccer team. When I told him we were going for the food, the House of Savoy, and Angelli money he turned his head and agreed, yes, this would be a good city for us. It is off the tourist track, and worth the visit. The downtown is one of the most gracious we have seen: an easy-to-negotiate grid with an extensive arcade system over sidewalks protecting you from rain, snow, and sun. Turin nestles into the Alps, so you see them at the end of most streets. Amazing.
The Savoy family ruled the Piedmont from Turin for centuries before becoming the royal house of Italy. Their Palazzo dell’Accademia delle Scienze is most known today for the Museo Egizio, one of the best collections of Egyptian art in the world. Amazing stuff, and it tells well the history of all periods of Egypt, not just the ones from a couple of archaeological digs they participated in. Lots of stories of pharaohs, of course, but also a good focus on the daily life of Egyptians of all classes. Michael liked the focus on beer and bread, I liked the mirrored Room of Kings, seemingly designed for Instagram-worth photos. Brilliant but exhaustive, we retreated to the Piazza Castello for an Aperol spritz and cookies.
Aperitivo is a northern Italian thing, an afternoon cocktail with happy hour type food. We usually found this was crackers or chips, but sometimes were surprised by what we got. We did not get into the habit in Milan, but we were ready for it in Turin, and they made it easy. We also discovered Campari and soda, an alternate to the Aperol that we found less sweet and more refreshing. It took us sixty years to appreciate a drink that was popular when we were kids, but who knew? We didn’t have aperitivo in Waltham or Houston!
The cathedral in Turin is dedicated to John the Baptist, the Duomo di San Giovanni. It’s where the Shroud once lived, but the chapel where the shroud had been held went up in flames in 1997. It’s since been restored, and the Shroud moved to its own museum. I was excited to see the chapel, the Capella della Sindone, designed in High Baroque by Guarino Guarini in 1694. We walked past the Duomo’s cool side chapels, includiing one to attractive Giorgio Frassati, mountain-climbing son of a Turin publisher who died of polio in 1925. He’s only a Venerable right now, but there’s an active movement to get him to sainthood. Pray to Giorgio for a miracle, and make a million Torinese dreams come true! We appreciated the Counter-Reformation altar, turned to where I knew the entry stairs for the Sindone are on the left, and were stopped dead by a locked door. Ditto on the right. That was wrong. Turns out after the renovation was completed the chapel was logistically detached from the Duomo and added to the Royal Palace tour. Huh.
We walked north past the Royal Palace, by ruins of a Roman arena still being excavated and back through the rear of the Giardini Reale, the Royal Gardens. We would see the formal Le Notre part of these later; this was the more English-style landscape used by residents of Turin as a park. South through the Galleria Subalpina, a Victorian glassed shopping arcade currently being renovated, and past the Guarini-designed Palazzo Carignano (home of the Savoy crown princes) and the neoclassical Teatro Carignano across the street. We shopped down the arcades of Via Roma to Porta Nuova and took the Metro to Lingotto.
When checking out the hotel’s neighborhood I found a place labeled “German Street Food” on Google, just a couple blocks away. We wandered over there, across Via Nizza’s eight lanes of traffic into a midrise neighborhood that had been built for Fiat employees. German Street Food has been replaced by a Turkish take out selling donner kebab. Or maybe it always has been? There were a couple of sausages on the menu, but it was not going to fill my Berlin currywurst jones, so we retreated to the shopping mall food court adjacent to the hotel. We found Wiener Haus, a chain restaurant serving what I had been looking for, so we got a salad with shrimp, a mixed grill, and sausages with potatoes cooked two ways. Interestingly no sauerkraut, or cabbage of any kind: too plebeian for refined Torinese tastes? It was oddly delicious, and we were happy.
Wednesday, September 25
The NH we were staying at is in the historic 1923 Fiat Lingotto auto factory. When it was built it was the largest auto plant in the world, as important as Henry Ford’s River Rouge in Detroit. Raw materials entered at ground level and ascended the factory to emerge onto the roof, where there was a test track for cars before they were driven down a spiral ramp to be shipped out. When it closed in 1982 the Agnelli family hired Renzo Piano, architect of Houston’s Menil Museum, to turn it into a convention center, college, art museum, shopping mall, and hotel. Piano did an amazing job, you enter the hotel lobby at ground like the materials did, then a glass corridor through a palm garden to cross to the rooms. The floor plan of the building was so deep that the designers were able to give us a front room that could be used by guests as a sitting area, show room, or office, then the bath/closet, then the spacious room itself with a view west to the Olympic grounds. A mural/timeline tells the story of the factory, and notes the historic designs of the furniture and lighting in the room. Like living in a Design Within Reach catalog. Thirty years old, the hotel still looks great. The breakfast buffet was outstanding, all the options you would find in America, England, Germany, and Denmark, plus cakes in the tradition of the Piedmont. We feasted each morning.
I’d been worried that the hotel was too far south of downtown, in a nowhereville space (it’s hard to make a former factory surrounded by parking lots anything else). I need not have, the Metro ran every three minutes, and had us close to downtown in five. Downtown stops are a ten-minute walk away from museums, but that was nothing. We got on the Metro to XVIII Dicembre, just north of Porta Susa train station, and walked east on Via Cernaia and north on the boulevard Corso Riccardi to the Santuario Basilica la Consolata. This is another design by Guarino Guarini, this time in association with Filippo Juvarra (who also did the royal palace in Madrid). This was interesting; they needed to squeeze the appearance of a full-size basilica into a small square lot. They used a very short but wide ellipse to make the nave, the altar proper is a hexagonal chapel off the long side. Through the magic of Baroque theater, it works. Must have appalled Victorian tourists. Guarini made amazing domes, this one soars to the heavens through a classical frame.
We continued east to the Palazzo Reale. This is a multipart extravaganza that you are forced to do in order after buying a combo ticket. Way too overwhelming, I hope they let locals dip in and see just one section of the ensemble. You start with a tour of the royal residence proper. There’s an entry courtyard in brick Baroque (who even knew that was a thing?), then you ascend to the residence rooms. Which go on for city blocks, one Baroque/Neo-classical extravaganza after another. Frescoes, stucco, statues, mirrors, furniture. The first ten rooms or so one is awe-struck, and then you just become sedated. After the 15th room I was crying for Dwell magazine, or even the restraint of a Robert Adam interior. When would it end? Death by grandeur! Finally, off a long corridor, one is let into the Capella della Sindone. It was strange to get here after this buildup – yesterday, I was ready for Guarini’s extravagance, but in the context of what we had just seen, it was like oh, okay, a ten story Arabesque octagonal dome, cool! Fun to look through the altar to the Duomo we’d been in the day before. On via a Chinese salon to the armory collection, one of Europe’s best. But armor? Really? We waltzed through to the Galleria Sabauda, the Savoy royal art collection. Yes, we were still in the same building, but it was hours later, and entered into a collection from the Gothic through 1750’s Neo-classicism. Lots of Venetians: Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Guercino, Bellotto. The latter showing us a river view of the same palace we were currently in. Both Brueghels, and a St. Peter of the chickens. But wait, there’s more! The art museum sends you through the basement into the antiquities collection, which includes an amazing silver head of a Roman emperor found in the excavations. Which we were adjacent to, as medieval corridors took us from the palace basement into a tunnel alongside the Roman amphitheater. Exhausted, we exited through the palace-side formal Le Notre gardens.
Lunch was at the unassuming Ristorante del Duomo. An antipasto platter with veal tonnato, two mozzarellas with tomato and pesto, a pepper with bagna cauda, anchovies in tomato sauce. We got pasta zucca with ham and radicchio for our carb, and a bicerin for dessert. Bicerin is the coffee drink of Turin, a shot of espresso, a double shot of hot chocolate, a pile of whipped cream and something on top: shaved chocolate, coffee beans, broken cookies. Delicious.
We decided we hadn’t had enough of the Savoys, so returned to the Palazzo Carignano to see if we could get into the princes’ residences. These are only by reservation, but the Museum of the Risorgimento in the same palace welcomed us. Sort of. Most museums started on the second floor, which made sense as they were on the piano nobile, the grand floor of what had been palaces. And being northern, modern Italy, they had elevators to take the disabled there. However, they never let us use the elevators. We tried here, and got to locked doors on all the museum floors. We returned to the ticket office where we were brusquely directed to the stairs. Interesting. Another oddity is that in most museums I was directed to the cloakroom to check my bag. Which was curious, since Michael almost always carried/checked the bag. They do not do suspenders in Italy, there is no Brooklyn hipster carry over, and they could only interpret mine as a backpack. I would explain that I was vecchio e gordo, old and fat, and there would be a moment of shock and embarrassment before we all laughed it off (uggh, gordo is Spanish, whatever, they got it).
The Museo Nazionale de Risorgimento Italiano tells the same story we saw in Milan, but with better material and in some of the spaces where the history happened. The only English was in some videos that did a good job explaining that the Industrial Revolution and the unification of Italy were coincident movements, and affected each other. The usual oversized history paintings and portraits, but here in halls that housed the first Italian parliament. A reinstallation of the room where King Carlo Alberto of Savoy died in exile from the Austrians, leaving the Italian throne clear for his son Victor Emmanuel II. The Senate chamber is impressive, ditto the first hall of representatives.
We’d seen a store called Pull/Love advertised in the arcades on Via Roma, this is a branch of a chain out of Florence. We found their location on Via Cavour and made the salesclerk’s day, buying out her stock of XXXL polo shirts in bright colors.
We took the Metro back to Lingotto, to get into the Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli before they closed. This is the Fiat family’s private art museum, on the top floor of the factory. To our surprise, it was closed: there were welcome signs and posters for current shows, but when we found the entrance from inside the shopping mall, it was clearly under construction. Nothing on the web site, no notice in the tourist news. A shame, their collection of Canaletto, Canova, Matisse, and Renoir is supposed to be fantastic. We asked a guard what was going on, got a very Italian shrug, but he asked if we wanted to see the test track. Hell yes. He very kindly got us on a service elevator to the roof, showed us which button to hit to exit when we were done, and set us free. Way cool. Great views of the neighborhood, which had been a venue during the 2006 Winter Olympics. No downtown vista, it was blocked by buildings in the complex or by the curve of the track. We walked north past the college to the original Eataly, in a former vermouth factory (not sure I’d want auto workers and vermouth mingling, but maybe that’s just me). A similar experience to what we had in Milan. We did shop this time, for chocolate and pasta to take home. The checkout was as unpleasant as at the Port Elizabeth IKEA; made us appreciate how much better we handle retail in America. We wandered back to Lingotto, finding the oval ramp that led cars out of the factory, and ended up eating dinner at McDonalds in the mall. An unsatisfactory snub to the Eataly ethos. We retreated to our luxurious room to recover over prosecco.
Thursday, September 26
We took Metro up to Principe Acaja, then walked to the Piazza Benefica Market in the Giardino Luigi. This had been written up as a “designer” market, but it looked like the regular clothes and food you’d find in any daily Italian street market. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We stocked up on chocolate, then found the bus stop for the 56. For the only time on this trip municipal transit let us down: the five-minute scheduled wait was over 45 minutes, but we knew it was unusual by the reactions of the locals around us. Eventually it showed and took us east to the Castello.
Chiesa San Lorenzo is another royal church by Guarini, this one with a round dome created from eight arched vaults. We were taking “stunning” for granted, but were glad we got to see this one. I was going to miss the baroque in America.
We walked down Via Po, home of funky neighborhood shopping, to the Fondazione Accorsi, museum of decorative arts in a historic palace. Lots of French and Italian furniture, porcelain, and snuff boxes. Good room settings, brilliant displays of copperware in shapes that Viking hasn’t yet discovered. Their specialty is Piedmontese furniture and rooms. The tour is in Italian only, but they gave us English pages to follow along. The guide kept trying to interact with us in Italian; I’m afraid I gave her just enough poor response for her to keep trying. Should have pulled a Michael and pretended to only speak Cantonese. The courtyard has a nice view of our next stop, the Mole.
But first, lunch. Taglieri is Italian for a cutting board, but in Turin also refers to a platter of cold cuts, cheese, and bread. We stopped at a restaurant that specialized in taglieri, amazing selection, with roasted vegetables and a salad topped with a cutlet Milanese, followed by a bicerin. Delicious.
The Mole Antonelliana is the tallest building in Turin, and the symbol on the back of the 2-cent euro coin. It was begun in 1863 to be a synagogue, but exhausted the Jewish community’s resources and completed by the city of Turin in 1889. It now houses the National Film Museum. This is a two-tier attraction: the viewing deck and the museum. Most people come for the view. The great central hall is a high cube that tapers to a square oculus. The elevator rises straight through that space, no shaft, just cables pulling you to the spire above. Wicked. Good vistas over Turin from the top. We were surprised by how low-rise the skyline is, we saw more church steeples than office towers. The cinema museum was a disappointment. Lots of good stuff poorly displayed. They try to create a cinema experience with themed areas, rather than just show the artifacts with appropriate interpretation. A ramp along the inside of the cavernous central hall was a complete waste of time, with a show about emojis that pretended to be about how to film emotion. The best part was the collection of predecessors to Edison, things like kinetoscopes and magic lanterns. Almost no mention of Bertollucci, Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti, Monica Viti, spaghetti Westerns. Unfortunate.
We’d seen some amazing glass at the Rinascente in Milan, so walked across downtown Turin to the branch here. In the end we decided against bringing it home, but got the name of the manufacturer in the hope we could find an American distributor. We walked southeast through the Giardino Aiuola Balbo and Piazza Cavour to Parco Valentino.
The park, the largest in downtown Turin, runs along the Po riverfront. It was set aside in 1856, and has relics of world’s fairs held in Turin dating back to 1884. We entered through a ceremonial gate from one of those expositions, and walked south along the river. It is tranquil, wooded, apart from the city but active even on a Thursday afternoon. There is a castle from the 1650’s in the center, and south of that the Medieval Village. This is left over from that first world’s fair, a facsimile of a medieval town with shops, restaurants, and gardens. We stopped in one of the bars and got an aperitivo. There is supposed to be a boat that runs along the Po as part of the public transit system, but even though we hung out at the bar for an hour next to the dock we never saw one. The park ends at the exuberant Fountain of the Four Seasons, which I loved. We walked uphill and west on Corso Dante, passing the historic first Fiat factory (former employees give tours on weekends) and back to the Metro to return to Lingotto.
Friday, September 27
We packed and checked out, but left our bags at the hotel to retrieve later. The Metro was so efficient and reliable, why not? We took the subway to Re Umberto and walked west to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna. It’s an interesting building, definitely Modern, but in a funky style that I cannot classify. Lots of the 20th Century artists we expect from around the world, with good representation of Italian Futurism and Arte Povera. Two temporary shows were up, one of the dreadful Paolo Icaro, but the other of Nella Marchesini. Marchesini was new to us, she painted in Turin in the 1920’s to 1950’s in a style kinder and more representational than Modigliani but with a similar color palette. Mussolini’s policies forced her Jewish husband and family to flee to the mountains behind Turin until after WWII. Interesting.
We walked north through a major Liberty-style neighborhood east of Porta Susa, stopping for lunch on Piazza Savoia. A ten-euro express lunch that was fantastic, once we figured out what was going on. Two options for each of four courses, we got one of each, it was the fastest service we had in Italy. Delicious calamorata in red sauce, ziti carbonara, fritto misto, cheese sandwich with pork slices, whipped cream dolce, Macedonia, and coffee. No, no bicerin, coffee. Get it or don’t. Fun.
We grabbed the subway to Lingotto, picked up bags, and returned to Porta Susa. There is an express bus that leaves every hour to Malpensa. I’d bought tickets the night before, but nervously asked the ticket vendor if they were okay. Was glad I did, they use the standard European 24-hour clock, and the bus I had tickets for had left at three that morning. She sold me another pair, we boarded the bus and were on our way. It took us north through the Porta Palazzo Market at Piazza della Repubblica: we’d wondered where the ethnics lived in Turin, and now we knew. It’s an hour and a half ride, mainly on a freeway with no significant views. We caught a cab at Malpensa to their Holiday Inn Express. Malpensa is not a well-appointed airport; we had to walk the length of the terminal, passing dozens of cabs, before we got to the taxi stand where one was allowed to pick us up. Further, there’s a twenty euro minimum for a fare even within the airport, but it was still cheaper than if we’d taken the train to Milan proper and then a cab out again.
The HIE was the standard expected, but conveniently located. I’d done some Googling the night before and found a restaurant within walking distance. To our surprise it was not a chain, but a local place called Scarabande. From the décor we think it was once an Asian restaurant, but now definitely serves sturdy, and wonderful, Italian cuisine. I got a Campari, Michael a wine from the Alto Adige, raw vegetables with tartar sauce (odd, but good), a meat and cheese platter, and spaghetti carbonara. A lovely last meal in Italy.
Saturday, September 28
A decent Holiday Inn breakfast, shuttle to our terminal, and Lufthansa flew us to Frankfurt. Unfortunately our flight was delayed getting in, and German Customs ate up an hour, so we only made it onto our flight to Dulles by racing through the airport. So much for the duty-free shopping! Our baggage did not make the flight, and after waiting at Dulles Customs for an hour we then waited at a Lufthansa desk another hour to tell them to send our bags to the address on (surprise!) the bags. Took them four days, but they arrived safely on Wednesday.
We were psyched to be able to make this trip. Italy is always a good idea, and the north lived up to all our hopes for great food and art, prompt service, and friendly people.
