Milan

 

Milan, Italian Milano, city, capital of Milano province (provincia) and of the region (regione) of Lombardy (Lombardia), northern Italy. it's the leading financial centre and therefore the most prosperous manufacturing and commercial city of Italy.The fact that Milan is at a distance from much of the remainder of Italy, that it's peripheral during a geographic sense, doesn't explain its position of “second city,” an edge it's always vainly fought. Indeed, a number of the best European capitals are peripheral during this sense. Rather, Milan’s role was the consequence of the immense historical importance and therefore the enormous accumulation of myths and symbols that conferred on Milan’s antagonist, Rome, an inevitable prestige. During the Risorgimento, the 19th-century movement for Italian unification, Rome became the guts of a future anticipated within the collective fantasies of the Italian people.The most striking of the monuments to be seen in contemporary Milan is that the cathedral, or Duomo, a triumph of Gothic architecture; it's one among the most important churches of up to date Europe, holding quite 20,000 people. Begun in 1386, it took five centuries to finish and rises over the world occupied at just one occasion by the churches of Sta. Tecla and Sta. Maria Maggiore. The Gothic facade of the cathedral was completed under Napoleon . the foremost imposing parts of the Duomo are its lateral aspects, its two top crosses, and therefore the apse. within the latter, a strong impression is formed by the three immense Gothic windows of finely carved marble. 

The casing, of pink-tinged Italian marble, is to be found on all sides of the structure. At the lower level, it lends character to the tiny trilobate arches, capitals, and flowers; it also appears on the buttresses and, above them, runs along the crowning row of gigantic statues; above these, it covers the decorated water gutters and, finally, enhances the lacelike ornamental crest. the outside of the cathedral is roofed with an interesting profusion of turrets, pinnacles, and quite 3,000 statues. Within are 52 pillars, each over 80 feet (24 metres) tall and quite 10 feet (3 metres) in diameter and bearing, rather than capitals, a crown of statues within their niches.