Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is the world's oldest active shopping mall — a cruciform glass-and-iron arcade completed in 1877 that connects Piazza del Duomo to Piazza della Scala and houses some of the most expensive retail real estate in Europe. The Milanese call it 'il salotto di Milano' (Milan's living room), and the evening passeggiata (stroll) through the Galleria — past Prada's flagship store, the Campari Bar, and the mosaic floors depicting the coats of arms of Italy's four capital cities — is the city's most civilised daily ritual.

The architecture is pure 19th-century confidence — a glass barrel vault soaring 47 metres above the marble floor, with iron ribs and lunettes that let natural light flood the arcade. Giuseppe Mengoni designed the structure as a symbol of Italian unification (the arcade is named after Italy's first king), and the scale was deliberately intended to rival the passages of Paris while surpassing them in ambition. Mengoni fell from the roof and died the day before the arcade opened, a tragedy that has never been satisfactorily explained as either accident or suicide.

The floor mosaic of the bull of Turin, one of four city coat-of-arms designs at the central octagon, has spawned a tradition: spinning three times on the bull's testicles with your right heel is said to bring good luck. The resulting wear has required the mosaic to be restored multiple times, and the indentation created by millions of spinning tourists is visible in the marble. The tradition is silly, the Galleria is sublime, and the combination of absurd folklore and architectural grandeur is perfectly Milanese.