Branca Tower

This guide to Branca Tower in Milan starts with the sixty-eight days workers had in 1933 to raise a hexagonal steel tower over a hundred metres tall for the fifth Triennale, at Mussolini's request. You'll hear how architect Gio Ponti and engineer Cesare Chiodi built it, why it was first called Torre Littoria, and how a cathedral decree about the Duomo's Madonnina set its exact height. From there the guide follows the tower's fall from favor after the war, its renaming, and the years it stood locked as unsafe. Listen for how Sempione Park below was designed with this exact vantage point in mind.