Della Spiga

Either the right or the left side of Milan’s “fashion quadrilateral,” depending on whether you look at it from via Manzoni or Corso Venezia. Guido Lopez and Silvestro Severgnini, in their guide Milano in mano (Easy Milan, Mursia), wrote: “Before the war, it was the quietest and most charming street in the city center, a kind of back-of-the-shop, tidy and very clean, at the service of buildings whose gardens overlooked the Naviglio. One went there to buy bread, fruits, vegetables, lamps, and passementerie.” It is still very clean and tidy, because an association tends to it, and a retired person, relying on the generosity of associates, works with a broom and a duster. But the street’s rustic and informal character is now only a memory. Now it is the scene of a fashion explosion, one that took place some years before the one in via Sant’Andrea, because in via della Spiga, during the 1960s, the first trendy boutiques opened their doors, including Cose, Adriana, and Dorothée Bis. The explosion has destroyed, among other things, a lottery ticket kiosk, a tiny pastry shop, the Beneggi pet shop, a fruit store, two stationery stores, the Magugliani haberdashery, the tiny underwear boutique Giuseppina, the Guffanti and Sironi bakeries, a butcher, the Central Drugstore, and a poultry store. That location was until recently a Garzanti bookshop which, as the last command post of culture on the street where the Literary Fair was born 70 years ago, later reopened, still at no 30 via della Spiga, but on the small inside piazza that was created after the building’s restoration. From the past, only the Armandola delicatessen has held on along with the most expensive elementary school in town. The invasion, here, has been total, even with some elbowing among the new arrivals.