Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is Milan's great glass-roofed arcade, a cross of two covered streets joining the Piazza del Duomo to the Piazza della Scala, with an octagon and a dome where the arms meet. It was designed by the architect Giuseppe Mengoni, who won the commission in 1861, and built between 1865 and 1877. Named after Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of united Italy, it was conceived as a monument to the new nation as much as a place of commerce, and it was bigger and bolder than the Parisian and Brussels passages that preceded it — a direct ancestor of the modern shopping mall.

The engineering is the spectacle. The four arms are barrel-vaulted in iron and glass, each about 14.5 metres wide, and the central dome spans some 37.5 metres, rising 17 metres above the octagon — a considerable feat for its time. Beneath it, the floor of the octagon is laid with mosaics of the coats of arms of the capitals of the young Kingdom of Italy. The monumental triumphal arch facing the cathedral was the last element Mengoni worked on: he died on 30 December 1877 after falling from scaffolding there, just days before the Galleria was officially opened.

The building earned the nickname "il salotto di Milano", the city's drawing room, and it has lived up to it for a century and a half. Historic names still trade under the vaults: Caffè Biffi, founded in 1867, the Savini restaurant, and the Borsalino hat shop, opened in 1883. The roof was badly damaged by Allied bombing during the Second World War and later repaired, with a major restoration completed ahead of Milan's Expo in 2015.

One ritual belongs entirely to the Galleria: in the floor mosaic of the bull, visitors spin three times on their heel for luck, and the tiles have worn through often enough to need repairs. Beyond the superstition, the reason to linger is the light — the way the glass vaults filter the Milanese sky onto the marble and stucco — and the framed view at either end, of the Duomo's white spires in one direction and La Scala in the other.

Getting there

The Galleria is in the very centre of Milan, opening off the north side of Piazza del Duomo. Milano Linate Airport (LIN) is about 7 km away. The Duomo metro station is directly outside the southern entrance. The arcade is a public passage open to walk through at any time; hours of individual shops and cafés vary.