Palazzo Cusani isn't always open to the public.

It faces out unassumingly on Via Brera, just down from the Pinacoteca, forming a part of the long wall of buildings that line the street. It's easy to just pass it by without paying attention to its intricate facade.


But every now and then the great doors are thrown open. It hosts exhibitions during Fuori Salone in April and is sometimes booked out for shows. Back in May and June, Acqua di Parma had filled its halls with pieces from a collection called "I'll Be There Forever". It was the first contemporary art exhibition produced by the company and explored the meeting of classic and modern themes in art.



I think you'll agree that Palazzo Cusani was the perfect place to host an exhibition of contemporary art that challenges the merging of modernity and tradition!

One piece felt particularly interactive. A fluorescent chandelier hung from the ceiling, lighting up sporadically. A guide was nearby to tell us that the installation was connected to a computer database which registered every lightning strike within the Italian territory.



Every time lightning hit Italian ground, the chandelier lit up. Such an interesting concept!




It was a really beautiful little exhibition with quite a small collection of pieces on show. I'm a pretty lazy person with a short attention span so it suited me rather well! It also meant that we spent more time looking at the individual exhibits and paying them the attention they deserved.

For the rest of the day, we meandered around the streets in Milan, walking further down from Brera into the centre.



I loved the pattern of light these windows cast upon the road!



Teatro alla Scala and the old headquarters of the Banca Commerciale Italiana, which is now an art gallery and well worth a visit!



Galleria Vittorio Emanuele of course. What trip to Milan would be complete without a visit?




One of my friends once said she wasn't that impressed by it, which I really don't understand! I'm terrible at practical things and would never be able to sculpt or build anything that even approximated this level of beauty. Other human beings made this! And the same goes for the Duomo cathedral which for some reason has always reminded me of the cooled wax architectures that frame bottle necks after they've been used as candle holders.




^The sound travels along the walls in the old market building - if one person stands in one corner and another stands in the corner by the closest diagonal pillar, they can speak to each other by speaking into the walls!



Lunch was at an excellent Japanese restaurant called Sumire very close to the Moscova metro station. And it was so cheap, I couldn't believe it! Two lunches came to €23 which is incredibly reasonable when you consider that one portion looked like this:



I had a tuna and rice bowl with a raw egg which was infinitely more enjoyable than I expected - although I completely failed at using the chop sticks (I was so intent on concentrating on getting the food into my mouth that I neglected to pay attention to aforementioned food going into my mouth - such as a huge wad of very hot wasabi! Oh my sinuses..)

Oh Milan, you never disappoint.