All Milan [antikvár]

PUBLISHER'S NOTEEvery Italian publisher dreams of publishing a book on Milan, for Milan is more than just a city of a thousand faces and a thousand facets, more than just the birthplace of masterpieces and geniuses, more than just a living museum brimming with famous monuments. The city actually embodies a whole life style and thus a special way of working, creating, and indeed conceiving life itself. Whoever decides to live in Milan nowadays does so on the basis of a conscious, carefully motivated choice. He knows what the city has to offer despite its somewhat less than outgoing way of opening up to newcomers, although this aloofness has actually nothing to do with snobbishness or over-bearingness, but is rather a sign of the city's natural modesty and reserve, Milan to the Italians of today embodies the myth of progress and ever increasing industrial surge - the city is efficient, hardworking, indefatigable. The good and the bad of the modern metropolis seem magnified and even exaggerated here. The eternal contradictions of contemporary man and the life he leads burst forth in all their dramatic force as integral parts of the vital fabric making up Milanese life. This is perhaps the most immediate aspect of Milan, the one which we have come to recognize as essential. But stopping here would give us a superficial description of the city. We have tried to go beyond the surface in an effort to discover another Milan in addition to the monumental and famous city everyone knows. This Milan is a somewhat more secretive, halfhidden, more private and consequently a bit more alive. This Milan is the city of everyday people, or as they say, the common man, in which the personality and soul of its inhabitants emerge clearly and fully delineated. Here it is easier to appreciate the artistic beauty and treasures the city concealswithin its deepest intimacy. It seems as though there is a Romanesque belltower soaring at every corner and that every single church, however tiny, preserves some little known treasures of art, so that we may appreciate the "other Milan" even more than the one familiar to us from monuments and picture postcards. The result is that we see Sant'Ambrogio's unique gabled roof with new eyes and discover with a pinch of surprise and even amazement the pinnacles and spires of the Cathedral soaring above ultramodern rooftops. Thus, filled with these experiences and emotions, we have attempted to set them forth in this book. It was not easy to blend together all the different facets the city presented us with from day to day - but Milan is like that. Next to Gothic rises ultramodern, next to a factory stands a Romanesque church, grandiosity goes side by side with simplicity. Of course, we do not claim to have created the definitive opus on Milan - that would be an almost impossible task. Rather our intention has been to give the visitor a picture of Milan as it really is, without trying to hide the contradictions and weaknesses inherent in every great urban conglomeration. We sincerely hope that our aim has been reached, although we would like to remind the reader that no big city ever gives easy access to someone approaching it for the first time and, of course, Milan is no exception to the rule. The discovery of Milan's evolutive growth, complexity of traditions, and multiple facets should lead the visitor towards a more careful and profound study of a city -which, in its unique blending of art and industry, embodies the highs and lows of contemporary living. Digging out what is human in a huge city is certainly no easy task. We have done our best - it is up to the reader to judge whether we have succeeded.