milan, galleria vittorio emmanuele II

The galleria connects the cathedral’s piazza to that of the opera house. It cuts a channel into the block’s mass, monumentalizes the newly exposed material, and glazes the operation’s abscess. Despite my weak anatomic metaphor (I'll work on it) the galleria is incredibly— monumentally –grand; on par with New York’s Grand Central Terminal. The singularity of its internal atmosphere becomes all the more apparent when one gazes down at it from atop the cathedral and notes the dispersion of its pedestrian-vantage coherence. Spines, antannea and a hodgepodge of parapets lend the passage’s external ironwork the air of a half-buried Buck Rogers spaceship.