Castello

It should be noted, for the record, that Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time.  He did implement a series of programmes that saw some of the trains - principally the ones foreign journalists and tourists might use - run on a far more efficient basis, but in the main, Italian Railways were chaotic before fascism and remained chaotic throughout.  

Similarly, though Mussolini liked to claim the credit for Milano Centrale, it was actually a building that had been planned for a couple of decades.  Milan's old main railway station was where Repubblica is now, but as is often the case with European termini, what was adequate in the mid-19th century quickly became outdated and useless.  A new station was planned, with a design approved in 1912, but then something called the Great War came along and held everything up.  Rebuilding resumed in the mid-twenties, to more or less the same scheme, so while it opened in 1931 under Mussolini's rule, it didn't have that much to do with him.

What's undeniable is that Milano Centrale has the oversized grandeur that screams fascist architecture. It feels like it's the product of a giant ego. This is the Carriage Hall, what in the UK would be a simple porte-cochère, but here it's massive.  Taxis and buses used to pass through here but a redesign in the 2000s pushed them into the adjoining squares either side of the station.  Now it's a large entry space, filled with kiosks for mobile phone companies and home to the rental car agencies, and still incredible to wander around.  

This is, I'll remind you again, the place where you were meant to get dropped off.  We're not even in the station yet.

The next circulating space is the Atrium.  This is where the station splits.  Head straight ahead and you're in a modern undercroft where the ticket facilities are.  So many ticket facilities.  

This is the area that was most changed and upgraded twenty years ago and it really looks it.  Suddenly it's all glass and bright LED lighting.  It's nice, yes, and there are also some fast food facilities and little station amenities, but this isn't what we came here for.

What we want is to get to the main hall, so it's back to the atrium where staircases and escalators wait for you.

The lines are elevated as they come into the station so it's necessary to get you up to their level for boarding.

The main hall though... if you don't say "wow" when you walk into it, you may be dead inside.  It's impossible to say or think anything else.  You step into a magnificent lofty space - a church to worship the railways.

Marble reaches upward (though it's concrete made to look like marble at the top; they weren't that mad with the budget) to the high vaulted ceiling with its roof lights.  Like any Catholic church it's richly decorated with artwork and statues proclaiming the glory of God - or rather, in this case, the glory of the train.

During my stay at the hotel across the square I'd often walk over in the early evening, just to poke around.  To look at all the different sizes and sights.  To take it all in.

The station's most famous mural is on the train hall side, one that depicts Mussolini himself - or it would, if the face wasn't completely obscured.  The story is that a wayward bullet during the war hit it and then they patched it with concrete.  Sadly, it's accessible only to ticket holders through new automatic gates watched over by stern guards; they were earning their money turning away American tourists who repeatedly seemed to want to wander through without a pass.  I went up into the Pret a Manger, where a glass balcony lets you see the trainshed for free.  There are twenty-four platforms hosting trains to destinations across the continent.

There are, perhaps, too many commercial interventions at the station.  Either end of the main hall has been enclosed for a glass bubble of a restaurant, but they're not high-end - there's a Wagamama and a Five Guys.  That's very much the vibe with the eateries and shops though at least the McDonalds is squirreled away where you can't see it, and there is an attempt at a food market in one of the side wings.  They've sort of misunderstood how a food market should work - you have to order and collect your food first, then find a table, rather than letting you order when you're seated.  It makes it all the more chaotic, though they had some delicious-looking offerings.

The one store I did have a good look round was the bookshop, which had a huge English language section, as well as a massive selection of Italian books with slightly disappointing covers.  For such an imaginative, artistic nation, Italy doesn't seem to want to put it on their paperbacks; the designs are frequently simple, a single picture and the title and that's it.

Stazione Centrale also has hidden depths of darkness.  Jews were taken from here to Auschwitz during the period German occupied Northern Italy, and a memorial wasn't placed here until 2013.  There's also a special waiting room Mussolini built specifically to receive Hitler when he visited; the floor is inlaid with swastikas.  Funnily enough that isn't often open to the public.

The station works, it just does.  It's epic and awe-inspiring but at the same time, simple to negotiate - you come in here, you see the platforms there, you know where to go.  

The only slight disappointment is the metro station.  There's some great M3 styling under there, but the interface between the underground and the overground is clumsy.  The circulation areas are under the Piazza Duca d'Aosta outside, but they're dark and small and distant; they were built when the Carriage Hall was still in use and so they have that roadway to cross.  Two travelators try to cut the journey but during the week I was there one of them was invariably broken.  

It's a small gripe however.  If anything, it makes the main station look even greater.  You come out of this low-ceilinged warren into the vastness of Centrale above.  

Milan is rightfully proud of its terminus, and it's an instantly recognisable part of the city, which is probably why there doesn't seem to be a sign telling you what it is.  It doesn't need one.  Which is inconvenient if you're a blogger who takes a lot of sign pictures.  You'll have to settle for this one instead.

I came. I saw. I swooned.