Day 51 The things people grad hold of

Milan is about an hour from Como and is regarded as the finance capital of Italy and indeed the fashion capital of the world. With a reputation like that we decided it was worth a visit. After a 35 minute ferry ride up Lake Como, a 45 minute intercity train trip and then a 6 minute local train ride we arrived at the Piazza del Duomo in the centre of Milan. We spent the day looking at the sights and checking out the shops.

Sadly we missed out on seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper, as you had to book well in advance or pay an outrageous tour fee to see the great masterpiece. We did however visit the famous Duomo Cathedral. This building is the largest gothic cathedral in Europe. It was started in 1386 and took over 600 years to build. It has 135 spires, 155 gargoyles and 3400 statues. It was, to say the least, impressive. To be honest we are not the greatest fans of this sort of building but one of the doors on the outside caused us the greatest interest.

The front doors which are probably 10 metres wide and 15 metres high are decorated with a huge bronze sculpture This beautiful sculpture vividly portrays story after story from the life and passion of Jesus. It was not surprising that tourists would want to pose in front of the door, as they pose in front of everything else in Europe. However what really surprised us was that most tourists wanted to pose while actually holding part the sculpture. It was as if they were grabbing hold of God and saying “Look Mum here I am holding onto the God statue at the church!” In fact the part that most people held was a different colour from the rest of the sculpture as the constant rubbing of thousands of hands had polished the bronze to a shiny finish. What was really odd, was the part of the sculpture that the crowds grabbed was a picture of Jesus being viciously whipped by a Roman guard.
It seemed to us that it was an obvious metaphor of all that goes wrong in the world. So easily we grab the crass, the cheap, the foolish or the popular often completely unaware that we have unwittingly grabbed hold of the ‘evil one’s’ leg.