The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan

The famous Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is considered the living room of Milan. It was built in the first half of XIX century and its style looked at the urban evolutions of the great European capitals. In 1859 the idea of a covered passage which could connect Piazza Duomo with Piazza della Scala (there’s the well known theatre) became concrete. It was made a competitive examination to evaluate propositions of various architects. 176 architects made their project but among those the one who won was Giuseppe Mengoni, who planned a long arcade crossed by a sort of big corridor with a central octagonal hall. In 1865 the works began, the first stone was posed by the king Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoia and two years after the Galleria was opened to the public, even if it was still incomplete and the king wasn’t there. But the construction of this Galleria has a tragic epilogue: its architect, Mengoni, died during an inspection on the building site. Some people thought about a suicide, because Mengoni received a lot of critics on his work and because the king wasn’t present at the inauguration: but the king was very sick, indeed he died few days after. The Galleria is full of shops and bars, and in the Christmas period is possible to see the beautiful Christmas tree which is completely decorated with Swarosky crystals.