Economist.com Cities Guide: Milan Briefing - March 2006

News this month

The crusader

On February 25th Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, staged a rally in his hometown of Milan to kick off the national campaign for Forza Italia, the party he founded more than a decade ago. He is keen to build on his party's support base in Milan before the elections in April. In a speech that ran for almost two hours, Mr Berlusconi asked thousands of party supporters to be “missionaries of truth” and spread word of the centre-right’s achievements. Polls show Forza Italia lagging behind a centre-left coalition led by Romano Prodi, a former president of the European Commission.

The Milan rally also gave Mr Berlusconi the chance to officially back Letizia Moratti, his education minister, as the centre-right’s candidate for Milan’s mayoral elections in May. (The current mayor, Gabriele Albertini, must step down due to term limits.) Ms Moratti, who claims she is an independent despite a prominent place at the Forza Italia rally, will face the centre-left’s candidate, Bruno Ferrante, Milan’s former police chief. Milan has long been a centre-right stronghold, but Mr Ferrante may have a chance. In June 2004 Filippo Penati, a centre-left candidate, was elected president of Milan’s provincial government.

Writing on the wall

Home of some of the world’s finest murals, Milan also hosts quite a few ugly scrawls on its walls. As part of its latest campaign against graffiti, the city government in February offered the free cleaning of at least 800 local apartment façades, or 75,000 square metres’ worth of wall space. The AMSA, the city’s waste agency, will use about €1m ($1.2m) in national funds to conduct the clean-up. The first-come, first-served offer was snatched up: within 24 hours building managers had turned in requests for cleaning some 1,200 buildings.

Milan’s Macedonia Melloni hospital, meanwhile, is grappling with a graffiti problem of its own. New fathers, it seems, often express their joy at the birth of a child by scribbling on the hospital’s walls. Staff have provided a chalkboard and chalk in the hope that the new parents will direct their elation in a more controlled, transient manner.

Get in line

Thousands lined up outside post offices in Milan and other Italian cities on February 18th to pick up forms for hiring foreign workers. A recent decree caps the number of permits for non-European Union workers in Italy at 170,000 this year. Permit requests are sure to well exceed this limit: more than 1.5m permit documents have already been distributed throughout the country.

While it is employers who must fill out the paperwork, immigrants accounted for the majority of people in line outside the post office in Milan’s central Piazza Cordusio. The permits, intended for workers trying to enter Italy, are also coveted by foreign workers within the country who hope to keep their jobs. Faced with such demand, many post offices quickly ran out of the forms, leaving immigrants to turn to the black market.

Taking the fifth

Plans for Milan’s fourth metro line may have stalled, but the scheme for a fifth line is moving at a nice clip. In February the city government awarded the construction contract for the metro line 5 to an international consortium led by Astaldi, an Italian construction group. The consortium included the Ansaldo Trasporti Ferroviari and Ansaldo Breda units of Finmeccanica, a state-owned company; Alstom, a French engineering group; Torno, an Italian company; and Azienda Trasporti Milanesi, Milan's city-owned transport firm. The contract allows the winning bidders to manage the line for 27 years.

Work on the €503m, 5.6km line is expected to begin later this year, and will initially link the central Garibaldi train station to the north-eastern edge of the city. Eventually, the line will be extended to the nearby city of Monza. Unlike Milan’s three existing metro lines, the new nine-stop metro will be completely automatic, with no need for a driver.

Ringing in the spring

Milan is preparing to welcome spring with another Notte Bianca, or White Night, on March 25th. Hundreds of events—including concerts, theatre performances, late-night museum openings and neighbourhood parties—are planned for the dawn-to-dusk Festa di Primavera (Spring Party). The array of events offers something for everyone, from midnight poetry readings to late-night shopping sprees.

Milan already enjoys an all-night party every June; the March event will be the city’s first in the spring. Past White Nights have been popular: more than 1m people are estimated to have turned out for last June’s late-night revelries.

Catch if you can

March 2006

Helmut Newton: Sex and Landscapes

Until June 6th 2006

Milan’s Palazzo Reale pays tribute to Helmut Newton, one of the world's most provocative fashion photographers, two years after his fatal car crash in Los Angeles. This exhibit, conceived by the photographer himself and curated by his wife, June, has plenty of the erotic images that made Newton famous. The female body was certainly his muse. But the 90 pictures on display also show another side of him, as they include landscapes, marine settings and buildings that also caught his eye. In addition to Newton’s work, the exhibit includes two videos: one in which the photographer is interviewed by his wife and another showing him at work.

Palazzo Reale, Piazza Duomo 12. Tel: +39 (0)2 8050-9362. Open: Tues-Sun, 9.30am-7.30pm (Thurs and Sat until 10.30pm). Tickets: €9. For more information visit the exhibit’s website.

More from the Milan cultural calendar