Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
— the light a glass roof leaves on marble.
Not only on a wall.
“Milan's covered street, opened in 1877. A cross of glass and iron between the Duomo and La Scala, designed by Giuseppe Mengoni. The Milanese call it il salotto di Milano, the city's drawing room. People come for Prada's original storefront, for Camparino's bar, for the bull mosaic on the floor everyone spins on for luck. Most days the light comes down through the octagonal dome and lands on marble nobody has time to look at. The Milanese walk through without looking up. Visitors stop in the middle and try to take the whole ceiling in one photograph.
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a covered double-arcade in central Milan, opened in 1877 and named for the first king of unified Italy. It runs in a cross plan between Piazza del Duomo and Piazza della Scala, linking the cathedral and the opera house, the longer arm stretching roughly 196 metres beneath an iron-and-glass roof. The four arms meet under a glass dome at the central octagon. The architect was Giuseppe Mengoni, who won the design competition in 1861 and died in a fall from the scaffolding on 30 December 1877. The building is widely cited as the prototype for the covered shopping galleries of nineteenth-century Europe, including the Galleria Umberto I in Naples. Milanese call it il salotto di Milano, the city's drawing room.
The arcade's roof is an iron-and-glass canopy completed between 1865 and 1877, with a central dome rising above an octagonal piazza where the four arms meet. At the time of its opening it was among the largest glass-roofed public interiors in Europe. Daylight enters through the dome and the four barrel-vaulted arms and falls on a floor of polychrome marble and mosaic. The central panels carry the coats of arms of Italy's four former capital cities: Turin's bull, Florence's lily, Rome's she-wolf, and Milan's red cross. The four lunettes under the dome carry allegorical frescoes of the four continents Europeans recognised in the 1870s. On bright afternoons the dome's iron ribs cast their octagonal pattern across the marble floor below.
The Galleria is a public passageway, open day and night, with no admission fee. The shops, cafés, and restaurants set their own hours. Prada's first store, opened in 1913, still occupies its original corner. Camparino, the historic bar associated with the rise of Campari and the modern aperitivo, has held its place at the Piazza del Duomo entrance since 1915. The most photographed spot on the floor is the bull mosaic of Turin, where a tradition of spinning on the heel inside the bull's groin is said to bring luck or a return to Milan. The mosaic is restored periodically and visitors are now asked to step around it. A rooftop walkway over the glass roof, the Highline Galleria, opened in October 2015 with timed tickets.