DK Travel : Milan and the Lakes : History & Culture

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A Month by the Lake

It’s 1937, and a group of stodgy society Brits and bored Yanks loosen their mores and inhibitions on the shores of Lake Como. Vanessa Redgrave and Uma Thurman head up the cast of this 1995 film by John Irvin. You can visit its setting, the Villa Balbianello, Lake Como.
A Traveller in Italy

H V Morton, who in his youth gained fame scooping the story of Tutankhamun’s tomb discovery in the 1920s, became one of the 20th-century’s best, if little-known, travel writers. His 1950s journey through Italy is an erudite combination of travelogue, history and wonderful prose, all of it surprisingly undated.
Abbazia di Chiaravalle

A countryside abbey now surrounded by the roar of suburban Milan, Chiaravalle has survived the centuries since its construction (between 1172 and 1221) remarkably well. Its lovely Romanesque architecture is enhanced by 15th- and 16th-century murals and a Luini Madonna with Child in the right transept.

Abbazia di Chiaravalle
AD 313: Edict of Milan

During Rome’s decline Milan became de facto capital of the Western Empire. Constantine, holding court here in 313, made Christianity the Empire’s official religion, setting a new course for European history.
Aïda (1872)

After a long absence from La Scala, Verdi offered this Egyptian melodrama.
Alessandro Volta (1745–1827)

This Como physicist invented the battery in 1800 and gave his name to the electrical unit.
Ancient

From prehistoric rock etchings dating back to the 12th century BC to sophisticated Roman villas of the 5th century AD.
Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506)

Mantegna’s classical mode of High Renaissance painting differed from but was as ethereally beautiful as that of his brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini. In 1460 he became court painter to the Gonzagas of Mantova, where he left masterful frescoes on the walls of the Palazzo Ducale. Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera houses his remarkably foreshortened Dead Christ (see ).
Antonio di Pietro (b. 1950)

The Christian Democrat party collapsed in 1992 following this magistrate’s investigation into political corruption.
Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737)

The greatest violin-maker who ever lived learned his craft in the city of Cremona.