Piazza degli Affari
Colossal marble middle-finger sculpture facing a nineteen-thirties stock exchange building.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Piazza degli Affari in Milan starts with the marble sculpture artist Maurizio Cattelan installed here in 2010, right after the financial crash, a four-and-a-half-meter hand missing four fingers that he titled L.O.V.E. It walks through what those letters spell out in Italian besides love, and points out that the hand's stumps echo the raised-arm Roman salute the Fascists adopted in the 1920s and 1930s. You'll also hear how city officials and nearby business owners reacted once the piece went up in front of Palazzo Mezzanotte, the exchange building the Fascist government finished in the same decade.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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