Parco Sempione

This guide to Parco Sempione in Milan follows the steel tower rising over the park back to the summer of 1933, when Mussolini told young architect Gio Ponti to give Milan its own answer to the Eiffel Tower in time for the Milan Triennale. It traces the fascist-era height rule the tower had to obey, its wartime renaming, and the decades it spent shuttered and unsafe before a liqueur company stepped in to restore it. Look up at the steel lattice spire as you walk the park's tree-lined paths toward the castle.