Galleria Vittorio Emanuele

Milan could not have hoped for a more spectacular theatre than the Galleria to stage its daily life and to recall the era when, in newly-united Italy, it ceased being the southern capital of the old Austrian Empire to become the economic capital of a young kingdom.
For well over a century now, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II - symbolic monument to life in the city of Milan - has been the place that refelcts the moods and sounds of the city, and that conserves the memory of the restless spirit of the Scapigliatura artistic movement, the aesthetic flowering of Futurism, the rebellious marches of social protest, the frondeur wind of Fascism.. Moments of passions, explosions of joy and grief.
Defined from time to time as "Souk of the Western World", "Grand Bazaar of an Arab City", "Monument to the Ephemeral" and "Pantheon of Light and Shade" in its early years Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, creature of Giuseppe Mengoni, was the target of barbed remarks.
And yet, in the collective imagination of the local community it is the lobby of La Scala, the proscenium of the Duomo, the place that in a heart covered with marble - the Octagon - contains the courtesy, virtues and whims of its identity.