Built twenty years too late, on purpose: a Parisian glass arcade raised in a Milan that had already moved on.
At a glance
The Galleria Meravigli runs between Via Meravigli and Via Gaetano Negri, in the block between Piazza Cordusio and Piazza Affari. It was built by the company La Milano Centrale between 1928 and 1930; the building permit was granted on 15 May 1928 and the works were directed by the engineer Luigi Repossi.
History
The arcade was part of the operation that moved the Milan stock exchange to Palazzo Mezzanotte in Piazza Affari, which happened in 1932. Repossi built for the same company, in 1932, the corner building between Via Meravigli and Via Santa Maria Segreta. The property today belongs to the national pension fund of surveyors.
What you see
A single arm about sixty metres long. The central hall is ten metres wide and is entered through two identical vestibules, each with four columns carrying Ionic capitals. A great vault of frosted glass and wrought iron runs the whole length and rises to nine metres at the crown. The floor keeps mosaic friezes with floral decoration in the Milanese Liberty manner, laid by the firm Fantini Mosaici.
Cultural significance
The dating matters. In 1928 Milan was building Novecento — Palazzo Mezzanotte, a few steps away, is of the same years and could hardly be more different. The Galleria Meravigli instead looks back to the glass and iron of the great nineteenth-century exhibitions and to the Parisian arcades, and its floor mosaics repeat a Liberty vocabulary that had gone out of fashion twenty years earlier. The building is therefore not Art Nouveau architecture: it is a late, deliberate quotation of it, which is why it is worth visiting and why it should not be filed with the Liberty houses of 1900–1914.
Key facts
- Built: 1928–1930, for the company La Milano Centrale; permit granted 15 May 1928
- Director of works: engineer Luigi Repossi
- Dimensions: single arm about 60 m long; hall 10 m wide; glazed vault 9 m at the crown
- Floor mosaics: Fantini Mosaici, floral friezes in the Milanese Liberty manner
- Address: Via Meravigli / Via Gaetano Negri, Milan
- Coordinates: 45.4656 N, 9.1843 E
Practical information & getting there
Metro M1 Cordusio, three minutes on foot. The arcade is a public passage and can be walked through at any time the gates are open; it is quiet, and the glazed vault is best seen in the middle of the day, when the light comes straight down. The Duomo and Piazza Affari are each five minutes away.
Sources & resources
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