Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

This guide to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan opens with architect Giuseppe Mengoni climbing the scaffolding above the entrance arch, two days before the king was due to cut the ribbon on his glass-roofed arcade. It traces the decade he spent fighting bankers, engineers and a skeptical city to build the covered boulevard linking the cathedral to the opera house, and the question that still hangs over how his story ended. At the center, under the dome, look down at the four mosaics ringing the octagon, and the worn tile where generations of visitors have spun for luck.