Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
World War II
WWII bombs devastated Milan, destroying a quarter of the city and leaving La Scala
and the Palazzo Reale in ruins. At the same time, strikes by the Italian Resistance and
anti-Fascist trade unions paralysed the city. Despite Italy's surrender to Allied forces in
1945, Mussolini declared a new Fascist republic, provoking a civil guerrilla war. The
partisans prevailed and Mussolini was captured and executed along with his mistress,
Carla Petacci. Their bodies were hung upside down in Piazzale Loreto.
Remembrance
The Cimitero Monumentale contains a memorial to the Milanese who died in Nazi con-
centration camps. Designed by Studio BBPR, the pure form of a cube is traced in steel
and slab marble, a response of reason and light to the horror of the war years. At its
centre is earth from the camp where Gianluigi Banfi, one of BBPR's four partners,
died.
Modern Milan
After WWII reconstruction began and Milan soon became a powerhouse in transform-
ing Italy's largely agrarian society into a modern industrial economy. More than nine
million Italians migrated north between the 1950s and '70s, and many ended up in Mil-
an and surrounding Lombard towns attracted by the steelworks, manufacturing and
railway construction. Likewise, Milan's philosopher-architects rebuilt the damaged city,
evolving concepts of form and function that have changed the way we live in the mod-
ern the world. These days 16% of Italy's population and 25% of its émigrés call Lom-
bardy home and the region generates 20% of Italy's GDP.
Entertainment
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Piccolo Teatro
THEATRE
