During our recent tour of Italy we had the opportunity to visit the spectacular Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milano. This short article shares a selection of images and discusses some of the history of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.
Milano is Italy’s fashion centre with the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II acting as its nucleus. This ornate shopping arcade is architecturally stunning.
Designed by architect Giuseppe Mengoni, construction began in 1865 and was completed in only two years.
One cannot help but be in awe of the glass and iron dome. It is truly breathtaking.
A selection of high-end fashion retailers can be found throughout the shopping arcade, as well as other shops and restaurants.
Under the central dome, there is a mosaic with the Savoy coat of arms and various animals. These represent some of Italy’s important cities. According to legend, visitors and locals will have good luck if they step on the bull with their right foot. They then have to rotate 360-degrees while keeping their eyes closed. If this action is done on December 31 at midnight… an entire year of good luck will occur.
There were so many people crowded around the bull mosaic waiting for their opportunity to spin around that I could barely capture any photographs of it. As it was, the image above was significantly cropped to take out numerous feet. Just in case you’re wondering… I took my spin on the bull as well!
No visit to Milano would be complete without spending some time at the Galleria Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Be sure to take a wide angle lens and be prepared to spend some time in post doing perspective control adjustments to your images.
Technical Note:
Photographs were captured hand-held using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. All images were produced from RAW files using my standard process.
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Hi Thom,
Thank you these beautiful images. I can see you have taken a lot of care in post to present them perfectly. The scenes taken with Nikon J5 + 1 Nikkor 6.7-13 mm f/3.5-5.6 in particular are very impressive. There is no way to correct soft, smeared corners if they are not sharp to start with.
The Nikon J5 + 1 Nikkor 6.7-13 mm f/3.5-5.6 is, just about, my all time favourite combination but I realise I will need to look for a replacement outfit for the future. Perhaps Micro Four Thirds.
I’m wondering if you have found a Micro Four Thirds lens of similar focal length of the 1 Nikkor 6.7-13 mm f/3.5-5.6 that you are happy with?
Richard
Hi Richard,
Thank you for your supportive comment… much appreciated! I agree that the Nikon 1 J5 with the 1 Nikkor 6.7-13 mm f/3.5-5.6 is a wonderful combination. This is one of our ‘must bring’ travel camera combinations.
We have purchased the M.Zuiko PRO 7-14 mm f/2.8 zoom and have found it to be an excellent lens. This wide angle zoom lens provides an equivalent field-of-view of 14-28 mm when compared to a full frame camera. It doesn’t match up exactly with the wide angle 1 Nikkor zoom… but having the extra width is wonderful for landscape and architectural photography. I am working on a summary article to give readers more information on our Olympus equipment selections and the rationale behind our choices. I imagine that article will be published before the end of October. We are extremely pleased with all of the M.Zuiko lenses we have purchased.
In the coming weeks and months you will be seeing more landscape images that we have captured with our Olympus OM-D E-M1X and our selection of M.Zuiko lenses… including the M.Zuiko PRO 7-14 mm f/2.8 and the M.Zuiko PRO 12-40 mm f/2.8.
Tom