Simeon and I had an outing today to the old city hospital (originally designed to unite 30 smaller ones!) which now serves as Milan's state university. It was built in 1456 and has some neat features, but it was kind of hard to see much other than the main inner courtyard, pictured here.
In between all the arches (there are TONS) is at least one figure in relief on top, and Simeon was pretty impressed with the giant statue of St. Ambrose, but thought that he looked "bad and mean". The building itself is a huge open rectangle cut into thirds; the middle third houses the main courtyard, and the two wings on either side (formerly the separate men's and women's areas of the hospital) are then cut into quarters to make a total of eight other courtyards.By far his favorite part of the morning was the goldfish pond at Giardino della Guastella, which has an entire column in our guidebook and is nearby the hospital. It's a 16th century garden and is supposed to be pretty nice, but in reality the grass was pretty bare and there were about 4 live goldfish and one floater! I guess that's what happens when you live in such a big city and are starved for a little greenery. Maybe the Milanese should take a vacation to coastal South Carolina to see some green grass every now and then? ;-) In any case, there was yet another playground, so it was a hit. One other stop at the "Rotunda", which used to serve as the cemetery to the hospital mentioned above, and is now supposedly a "children's garden", but wasn't really worth a picture or the walk from the metro!
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