Milano Centrale

Milano Centrale is less a railway station than a monument to arrival. Its main front, facing Piazza Duca d'Aosta, stretches about 200 metres wide and some 50 metres high, a massive stone wall of arches, columns, reliefs and sculpture that reads more like a palace or a temple than a place to catch a train. The architect Ulisse Stacchini won the design competition in 1912 with a project titled "In Motu Vita", life in motion. The First World War and the economic crisis that followed stalled the work, and building resumed in earnest only in 1925; the station opened on 1 July 1931.

The long gestation shows in the style, which defies any single label. Stacchini's first ideas belonged to the Liberty movement, the Italian Art Nouveau, but the building was completed under the Fascist regime and absorbed its taste for monumental grandeur, so that ornament of Art Deco lineage sits on a scale that recalls ancient Mesopotamian palaces; the mix is sometimes called "Assyrian-Lombard". Inside, a sequence of enormous halls and staircases leads up to the platforms, lit from above and lined with stone, mosaic and relief. Beyond them opens the train shed designed by the engineer Alberto Fava: steel and glass vaults some 341 metres long and covering about 66,500 square metres, the central one spanning 72 metres at a height of 34 metres, a record span when it was built.

The station also holds a memory that visitors can easily walk past. From a hidden track below the main platforms, Binario 21, Jews and political prisoners were deported from Milan in the years of the German occupation. Since 2013 the space has housed the Memoriale della Shoah, a quiet counterpoint to the pomp above. Today Centrale is one of Europe's busiest stations, with 24 platforms and hundreds of thousands of passengers a day, and simply walking its halls at a slow pace, looking up, is one of the great free architectural experiences of Milan.

Getting there

Milano Centrale is on Piazza Duca d'Aosta, north-east of the historic centre; the Brera district is about 2 km away. It is served by two lines of the Milan Metro, as well as by trams and buses. Milano Linate Airport (LIN) is the closest airport, about 7 km away, while the Malpensa Express runs directly from Centrale to Malpensa Airport in roughly 50 minutes.