7 curiosities about Milan

We’ve repeated many times that Milan is a city that you never cease to discover. This certainly is true for those who visiti it, but often also the Milanese people don’t know all the curiosities and secrets that hide behind what many consider simply a fashionable hard-working and fun-loving city. Do you want to know more? Today we’ll reveal 7 curiosities you don't know of Milan!

At number 10 of Via Sorbelloni there is what may well be considered the most strange doorphone in Milan: a bronze sculpture in the form of an ear made ​​in 1939 by the Milan artist Adolfo Wildt. Because of this peculiarity the house was nicknamed "Ca' dell'orèggia". Unfortunately, the doorphone is not working since a long time, but the legend tells that, whispering a wish into the ear, it will come true.

Everyone knows the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio, but not all of them know that just in its immediate vicinity there is a marble column with a Corinthian capital characterized by the presence of two holes far from each other about 25 centimeters. It’s said that the devil had pierced the column with his horns and there had been trapped for two days. The legend also says that from the two holes you can feel a strong smell of sulfur.

The symbol of Milan is the famous "big snake" or a dragon that holds in its jaws a young man. We know that the big snake was the emblem of the Visconti family, but what is its true origin? According to the legend, the symbol appeared on the shield of a noble Saracen killed by Ottone Visconti during the siege of Jerusalem in 1066 .

Another legend, however, tells that the big snake was the legendary Tarantasio, a monster that infested the waters of the now vanished lake Gerundo, which extended from Milan to the current province of Crema. After several attempts to get rid of the monster, it was the noble Umberto Visconti to have the courage to kill it before it devoured the child who had already begun to lock in its jaws.

Another among the curiosities about Milan is that thousands of skulls and other human bones decorate the walls of this small church in Piazza Santo Stefano. The San Bernardino alle Ossa Church, in effect, was built in 1268 on top of a graveyard and it is not clear where its macabre decorations came from: some say that they are the remains of saints or martyrs, while others say that they’re the bones of plague victims.

At the beginning of Corso Sempione, at the corner with Via Moscati, we can notice a rail bumper in the middle of a grassy traffic island. It’s surely very strange, if you consider that in this area there aren’t trains, rails or railways. The answer comes from the history of Milan, which reveals that once a railway station that connected Milan to Gallarate rised here.

This is a curiosity that opera music lovers will know. Giuseppe Verdi, arrived in Milan in 1830, tried to enter to the Conservatory, but was rejected for his “incorrect position of the hands on the piano". Needless to say, the great composer got his own back: today the Conservatory in Milan bears his name!

At number 35 of Via Poerio you can find a very characteristic house: it is a reproduction of a building that, in the Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, America, is known as "Home 770". In the 1940s the Lubavitcher, one of the largest community of orthodox Jews, bought the house in order to let Rabbi Yoseph Yitzchak Schneerson dwell in it, as he arrived in America from Europe to escape the Nazis.

The home 770 thus became a holy place for the Jewish community, so much so that several members decided to replicate it in other cities in the world. Today there are, in fact, about ten reproductions of the original house spread throughout the world: that of Milan has the distinction of being the only one in Europe.

Book now