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Though most people associate Rome with Renaissance art and architecture,
and Milan with more modern periods, the reality is actually quite different. Both
have outstanding examples of old and new works – and a lot more in common
with one another than initially meets the eye. Helen Crawshaw investigates
Of
all the cities in Italy, none appear to contrast more sharply than Milan and Rome.
Take the Lombardian capital. Once the country’s industrial heart, Milan
– which sprawls across a featureless plain, criss-crossed with disused canals
– morphed some 30 years ago into Italy’s most important business and
banking hub. Frenetic, exciting and progressive (especially in the fields of fashion
and furniture
design), the key words are money, success and the future, towards which it forges
a relentless daily path. It also has a reputation for being all work and no play,
a five-day city where people pass long, hectic weeks in the office before escaping
to the mountains or lakes on Friday night, leaving it weirdly empty (and lovely
to visit) over the weekend. The weather – icy cold winters, stifling hot
summers – has more in common with Eastern Europe than the Mediterranean.
Even the look of the city is rather un-Italian – rows of sober 18th- and
19th-century palazzi interspersed with beautifully-balanced neo-classical facades
(most notably that of La Scala) and the odd medieval church.
Rome,
on the other hand, is a slow, meditative place, cut by a river and spead out across
seven hills. It’s about getting up late, sipping a cappuccino and contemplating
the view which, if you live in the centre, might include a Bernini sculpture or
an Egyptian obelisk. As the capital of one of the world’s greatest ancient
empires, centre of a global religion and political nucleus of modern-day Italy,
Rome has nothing to prove. Its raison d’être was established some
20 centuries ago and, these days, its inhabitants are happy to coast along without
the stress that comes with innovation and modernisation. Apart from high summer,
when temperatures soar, and January and February, when it pours, the weather is
almost always glorious. What’s more, everything you could possibly hope
to achieve – architecture, philosophy or literature – has already
been realised by the city’s ancestry. So why bother?
For all their apparent differences, however, Milan and Rome are not as dissimilar
as they might seem. The enthusiasm with which both cities developed buildings
in so-called Liberty or Art Nouveau style at the beginning of the 20th century
is proof of this. In Rome, an entire Liberty-style neighbourhood known as Coppedè
was created between 1921 and 1926 by the Florentine architect Gino Coppedè,
after whom it is named. Centrally located around piazza Buenos Aires, north-east
of the Galleria Borghese, the district is a unique example of one man’s
extravagant, even eccentric interpretation of the dominant approach of the time.
Throwing in elements from medieval, Renaissance and other eras, Coppedè
transformed some 31,000 square metres into an enchanted residential realm of palaces,
castles and fairy tale houses with gold exterior mosaics, Rapunzel-esque towers,
painted ceilings and decorative sculptures accessed via a fantastic entry arch
on via Tagliamento. Some 40 villas – the most famous of which is the Palazzo
del Ragno (Spider Palace), named after the mosaic design on the portal –
were erected bearing pinnacles, elaborate wrought-iron balconies and almost any
other form of decoration you care to imagine, from false coats of arms to grisly
medusas and tragic masks. Every single piece of visible marble or brick was sculpted
into some living shape and, in the streets, road lamps were replaced with chandeliers,
and piazzas were endowed with wildly embellished fountains, like the Fontana delle
Rane (Fountain of the Frogs) in piazza Mincio, the district’s main reference
point.
Further north, the Milanese embraced the movement with equal fervour but adopted
a more restrained, serious approach. Examples of the style are found scattered
throughout the city, but there are two areas of concentration – the roads
around via Mozart just east of the famous fashion district, and the stunning residential
district around via Tamburini towards the Fiera di Milano. Consisting of magnificent
villas built by rich industrialists, the latter is a marvellous display of wealth,
with exquisite stained glass, precious mosaics and ornamented cornices adorning
every house. The upper half of via Tamburini number eight, for example, is covered
in gold and blue mosaic tiles, with a pilaster of fruit and flowers running up
each corner, while number 10 boasts delicate external frescoes and windows 'supported’
by rows of mini-doric columns. In contrast, the buildings along via Mozart, via
Cappuccini and via Monforte have a more Adams Family feel, with cherubs, gargoyles,
portcullis-like gates and castle-style battlements – a collection of which
can be found at Palazzo Berri- Meregalli on via Cappuccini.
Not
long after the Art Nouveau period, Italian architecture took a political turn
and another link between Milan and Rome was formed when the Fascist regime commissioned
a series of buildings in both cities that, stylistically, reflected the totalitarian
attitude and imperialistic aspirations of the government. Monumental, domineering
and intimidating, the new form marked the beginning of a fresh architectural era,
and while it lacks the balanced loveliness of the Renaissance époque, the
sheer power of the colossal style cannot fail to impress. For those visiting Milan,
striking examples appear all over the city (the tourist office block in piazza
del Duomo, the Triennale design museum and the Palazzo di Giustizia on corso di
Porta Vittoria), but Stazione Centrale is probably the most imposing of all.
Constructed between 1925 and 1931, it was, in fact, the first major work of
the Fascist government and is still the largest train station in Italy, with a
dazzling white 207-metre-long façade richly decorated with sculptures inspired
by symbols of the regime. Inside, a series of vast marble-clad halls are connected
by grand staircases and a profusion of sculptures and reliefs (including Castiglioni’s
representation of the four alleged bastions of Fascist thinking: work, trade,
science and agriculture) make it as much an art gallery as a train station. Rome,
on the other hand, has – amongst other things – an entire quarter
constructed to symbolise the achievements of Fascism. Known as the E.U.R., the
district was primarily created to host the Esposizione Universale di Roma (World
Expo Rome), planned for 1942, but also with a view to the expansion of the city
towards the Tyrrhenian Sea.
World War II, of course, put the world expo on hold and the buildings remained
incomplete until 1952, when government departments were allowed to take up residence
in some of the awesome edifices such as the Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro.
These days, the zone also houses a number of excellent museums, like the Museo
della Civiltà Romana, but the real reason to visit is to experience the
Fascist urban vision – wide, empty boulevards, monumental white marble buildings
and acres of carefully controlled green space.
Perhaps the most surprising link of all between Italy’s two principal
cities, however, is in their art, rather than their architecture – not least
because the reality is at complete odds with the common perception. Broadly speaking,
people tend to associate Rome with ancient and Renaissance works and Milan with
later periods and the 20th century. And they’re not entirely wrong to do
so – the capital has some of, if not the, best museums in the world for
15th- and 16th-century art (not to mention treasures like Michelangelo’s
ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and the three Caravaggios hanging in the church
of San Luigi dei Francesi), while Milan has a superlative collection of modern
art, including key pieces from the Futurist movement of the early 1900s, which
was strongly associated with both the city and the fascist regime. The detail
that tends to get overlooked, though, is that Rome also has a world- class museum
of modern art, and while Milan doesn’t have the same quantity of Renaissance
works, what it does have is of the highest order.
Much
to the delight of the Milanese, for example, their city possesses not one, but
three, important works by Leonardo da Vinci (L’Ultima Cena at Santa Maria
delle Grazie; Musico in the Pinacoteca Ambrosia and his extraordinary Codice Atlantico
in the Ambrosiana Library),
while Rome has none. Milan also claims Michelangelo’s Pietà Rondanini
(on show in the Castello Sforzesco) and, between them, the city’s three
principal museums (Pinacoteca di Brera; Pinacoteca Ambrosiana; Museo Poldi Pezzoli)
house masterpieces by Caravaggio, Raffaello, Mantegna, Veronese, Botticelli and
a host of other masters that place Milan as one of Europe’s most important
centres of Renaissance art.
Equally,
the mass of 19th- and 20th- century art at Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte
Moderna, housed in the grand Palazzo delle Belle Arti in the park of Villa Borghese,
easily holds its own against the Milanese collections. Sensibly, the gallery is
divided into four chronological sections that allow visitors to chart the progression
of the various styles, but it’s the upper right wing with its fine display
of Futurist art and parallel movements that really impresses. Here, works by Boccioni,
Balla, Carrà, Sironi and Severini give a unique insight into the Italian
psyche of the early 20th century, when notions of industry, labour, speed and
power gripped the nation. It was a time of aggressive development and change that
is usually associated with industrial Milan, but actually affected the entire
country. So it is only fitting that, like the art of the Renaissance, the artistic
heritage of the period resides not just in the Lombardian capital, but in other
cities, too.
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