Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

1877 · Iron and Glass Vault · Work 59 of 1,871

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, 1877, Iron and Glass Vault

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, glazed barrel vaults meeting at an octagonal crossing under an iron and glass dome, the mosaic bull set in the pavement below.

What it was used for
Covered shopping street between the cathedral square and the Piazza della Scala in Milan, and at the same time a showpiece for the young Kingdom of Italy. Vittorio Emanuele II laid the foundation stone on 7 March 1865 and the first section opened on 15 September 1867. The main arm measures 196.60 m, the cross arm 105.10 m, the clear width 14.50 m; over the crossing stands an octagon about 37 m across and 47 m high. It contains some 350 tons of iron, supplied by Henri Joret et Cie of Paris. The gallery was built not by the city but by a London joint-stock company, the City of Milan Improvements Company Limited. The company became insolvent in 1868/69, and Milan had to take the structure over itself - the price is given differently by different sources and is left open here. Then, on 30 December 1877, during the final inspection and one day before the agreed handover, the architect Giuseppe Mengoni fell from the scaffolding and died.
What was new
Predecessors were plentiful. The Passage des Panoramas in Paris of 1800 is 133 m long and 3.20 m wide; the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert in Brussels of 1847 count for UNESCO as "les premieres galeries couvertes reellement publiques d'Europe", 213 m long, 8.30 m wide, 18 m high. The difference is scale: Milan's arms at 14.50 m are nearly twice as wide as the Brussels ones and at about 30 m nearly twice as high, and over the crossing stands a glass dome 47 m high. This is no longer a shopping arcade but a covered street at the scale of the city.

Further reading