Only two days before the start of the Milan Cortina Winter Games, Milan did not feel like an Olympic city.
The rain had been steady and miserable almost all week. The streets were largely empty, the restaurants and bars half full. The main Olympic host city felt far from alive. Under the dark skies, it felt gloomy even.
The mood swung in the opposite direction on Thursday morning. The skies turned blue, the sun shone and crowds – Olympic ticket holders from around the world, Olympic staff, shoppers and journalists – took to the streets. The atmosphere was festive and everyone was making plans to see the Olympic torch as it was carried through the city.
“We can suddenly feel the energy and passion here,” said Gloria Vergara, a Spanish makeup artist who is one the 23 Spanish and Portuguese women, and a few men, brought in to primp the faces of the athletes and entertainers, including Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, set to appear at the opening ceremony at Milan’s San Siro stadium Friday evening.
Vergara and her colleagues were posing for photos in Piazza del Duomo, the enormous square that surrounds Milan’s ornate Gothic cathedral, Italy’s biggest church. The square was packed. Construction workers were putting the finishing touches on the platform that will receive the torch in the evening, after which the Olympic cauldron will be lit.
Nearby, in Milan’s historic centre, stores were filling up and some shop owners were tweaking their wares and window displays in the name of the Olympic spirit.
Francesco Pettinaroli, grandson of the founder of one of Milan’s oldest businesses, F. Pettinaroli & Sons, a printing and cartography store that first opened in 1881, was busy pulling watercolour prints from the 1956 Cortina Olympics from storage. He put a few of them on display in the front windows, with price tags of about €600 ($970).
The prints’ artist, the late Giuseppe Bacci, used simple flowing lines to depict athletes in motion, including a skier with a scarf flying through the air.
They evoked an Olympic era just before the media revolution hit. All subsequent Olympics became global, mass-market TV events (and skiers no longer wore scarves as they sped down the race courses).
“I am passionate about mountain sports and these prints,” Pettinaroli said. “I sold one this morning to a family from Miami.”
This print shop in Milan, now owned by Francesco Pettinaroli, was already decades old when Cortina d’Ampezzo last played host to the Winter Games in 1956. Giuseppe Bacci of Bologna painted watercolours for that event. He died in 2018.
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Giuseppe Di Fede made oil paintings to honour the athletes who will soon test their mettle in Milan.
On the other side of the street, Antonio Miniaci, owner of the Miart art gallery, was receiving a delivery of Olympic oil paintings freshly made by local artist Giuseppe Di Fede. The ones to be sold by the gallery show hockey players and figure skaters in action.
Miniaci said he was thrilled that the Olympics had put Milan in the global spotlight. “The Games are good for Milan,” he said. “This city is becoming more international and the Olympics give us great publicity.”
He is not going to any of the Olympic events. “I will stay here in the hopes that I will sell art to some of the foreign visitors who fall in love with this city and Italian culture,” he said.
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Gallery owner Antonio Miniaci is sitting out the Olympic events.
Milan was full of shoppers from around the world on Thursday. Many were strolling Via Montenapoleone, which is often listed as the most expensive fashion shopping street in the world. Among the store brands are Chanel, Gucci, Tiffany, Rolex, Loro Piana and Fendi. Many tourists come just to gawk at the window displays.
The employees of the three-level Brunello Cucinelli shop, where cashmere scarves can cost €1,500 ($2400) or more, were pleased that platinum-card-wielding shoppers, many of whom came to see the Games, were finally cruising the aisles after a slow few weeks. “Yes, people come here for the Olympics but also come here for the fashion, the furniture and the food,” said Natalia Novosad, a store manager. “The Olympics give them another excuse to come here to shop.”
One well-dressed shopper meandering through the high-fashion streets was Wilma Cheung, a retired accountant from Hong Kong. “We are here mainly for the Olympics but you can’t come to Milan and not shop,” she said.
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