Walking in the streets of Milan

Art is everywhere in Milan and the streets are no exception to that. When walking around in the city, you might notice some sculptures or paintings that you wouldn’t expect to see outside, or even expect anywhere at all. I'll tell you about a few of them that I found surprising here. They are more or less known by tourists and they are usually more accessible and less busy than other more popular places, which is just better to enjoy them.

The Gucci Art Wall

If you decided to go and visit the Garibaldi / Corso Como area, you will probably end up seeing this huge Gucci wall. The Gucci Art Wall is considered an “open-air museum”. The design on the wall changes every few months. I have been in Milan since last September and I have seen two of them so far.

The previous one was dedicated to promoting Gucci’s new perfume, "Bloom". The one before that was just a blank wall with the sentence “Common sense is not so common” written on it, from the pictures I have seen.

It’s funny seeing such an original way of advertising like this. I don’t think there are any Gucci store around this wall, but I guess this is part of the modern and artsy side of Milan. An this definitely works for Gucci, this wall is quite popular here!

Below is a picture of the current design on the Gucci Art Wall.

And this was the previous one (which I personally preferred to the current one).

Update: in the following picture you can see the NEW Gucci Wall. I thought they would change it every 6 months but apparently it's more like every 3 or 4 months! This is the third Gucci Wall that I see since I moved to Milan last August.

L. O. V. E. sculpture

Located on Piazza degli Affari, this sculpture is quite surprising. It is placed right in front of the Italian Stock Exchange, and it was put there after the economic crisis, in 2010. When you know that, you can easily guess what message and expressions the artist wanted to convey.

The four fingers of the hand are all cut, except the middle one that is raised.

This sculpture is called L. O. V. E, which an acronym for Libertà, Odio, Vendetta, Eternità (which translates to Freedom, Hate, Revenge, Eternity).

Bosco Verticale

When you are on Piazza Gae Aulenti, you can see mostly high towers with glass windows. But there is also another building right behind it, which has a completely different look. There are no huge glass windows on this one, but rather trees and plants all over the façades. “Bosco Verticale” means “vertical forest” and when you see the building, you easily understand why it was named like this.

Some people actually live in this building. What is unexpected here is the contrast with the Piazza Gae Aulenti, which is really modern and urban, and this building, which is unusual in itself, wherever in the city it could possibly be.

Source

There are also works that you can temporarily see in the streets. This one for example was a roof of umbrellas, in one of the streets of the Brera neighborhood, which was there only during the Fashion Week last September.

These are just a few of the "funny" and unexpected things that you can see in the streets of Milan. I’m pretty sure that by exploring the streets you will find more of these places with masterpieces that are totally worth seeing.