Milano ancora ieri. La città narrata da Alberto Vigevani is now online: a literary walking itinerary developed by APICE and the Libraries Department of the Municipality of Milan, inviting visitors to discover the city through the eyes of one of its most distinguished citizens, the writer and publisher Alberto Vigevani.
The itinerary takes its name from Vigevani’s Milano ancora ieri. Luoghi, persone, ricordi di una città che è diventata metropoli, published posthumously by Sellerio in 2012. In this vivid portrait of Milan, the city’s enduring appeal emerges through memories of its customs, places and people. The ten stops of the itinerary are drawn from the book and can be explored either in person or online.
The walking route takes approximately one hour and forty minutes. It begins at the Indro Montanelli Public Gardens and ends at the Casa della Cultura in Via Filodrammatici 5, home to the association founded in 1946 by Antonio Banfi and other anti-fascist intellectuals. Along the way, the route passes through Piazza Sant’Alessandro, the literary cafés of the 1930s in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, Peck - Milan’s historic gourmet food hall - in Via Spadari, and the Contrada Santa Margherita, just behind Piazza della Scala.
The ten stops can be explored using the dedicated map or, alternatively, on Google Maps, from both mobile devices and desktop computers. Each stop is presented on the website through a detailed entry featuring excerpts from Vigevani’s Milano ancora ieri. The texts are accompanied by images from the archives preserved at APICE, first and foremost the Alberto Vigevani Archive, together with the photographic archive of the Milanese daily newspaper La Notte.
With this project, we wanted to transform the heritage preserved at APICE into an experience open to everyone,” explains Roberta Cesana, President of APICE. “Archives do not merely preserve documents: they safeguard a cultural memory which, when interwoven with the places of the city and with Alberto Vigevani’s writing, offers new ways of reading Milan. This itinerary shows how archival heritage can move beyond the places where it is preserved and become a tool for knowledge and participation, capable of connecting research, territory and citizens.
The archival documents provide the images over which Vigevani’s words unfold: in some cases book covers, letters or drafts bearing the author’s handwritten corrections; in others, period photographs such as those of Corso Monforte or San Babila in 1965, or the images taken in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in October 1976 during the replacement of the canopy at the Savini restaurant. A distant world is brought back to life through the author’s writing, revealing his deep bond with the city.
My father, Alberto Vigevani, had what I would call a ‘physical’ relationship with Milan,” says Marco Vigevani. “For him, every place was almost a living, speaking presence, rather than simply a building, street, square, garden or canal. Like every writer, he did not merely describe places: he made them his own, so that others could feel them as their own too. His Milan, therefore, has not disappeared. It has become a kind of book-city, whose traces can still be found through his works.
The LetMi project - an acronym for Letteratura Esperienza Turistica a Milano - of which Milano ancora ieri is part, is an initiative of Milan UNESCO Creative City of Literature. It offers a range of interactive, author-based itineraries on a digital platform, following in the footsteps of the great writers who, over the centuries, have lived in and written about the city.
The platform was created in response to the Ministry of Tourism’s public call for projects aimed at enhancing UNESCO World Heritage Sites and UNESCO Creative Cities. It is managed by the Libraries Department of the Municipality of Milan in collaboration with YesMilano, the Municipality’s Innovation, Technology and Digital Services Directorate (ITeD), and its Labour, Youth and Sport Directorate.
