The original painting by Leonardo da Vinci known by the name of The Last Supper is one of the great treasures, as well as one of the great enigmas, that the city of Milan holds, a city that is both rich and enigmatic. Towards the middle of the twentieth century Salvador Dali, inspired by Leonardo, created a work that turned the room where the meeting would have occurred into one that resembles a spacecraft with views of nature, which is very representative of the atomic period of the surrealist artist.

Since about midway through the last century there has been an abundance of theories that identify the figure of Jesus Christ with an alien that arrived from outer space to relay a message. They go as far as to suggest that spaceships directed the three wise men toBethlehemto worship the baby Jesus. Within these heterodox movements the astounding vertical ascent of the magnificent cathedral of Milan has always been regarded as one of the most perfect astronomical observatories of all time, but for those who prefer the fundamentals and figures of science, the city also boasts a neoclassical building from 1930 that has harmonious dimensions and beautiful color combinations of gray, orange and green where you can look at the stars more accurately and dream of distant meta-human worlds out somewhere in the universe.

This is the beautiful Ulrico Hoepli planetarium (http://www.comune.milano.it/dseserver/webcity/Documenti.nsf/webHomePage?OpenForm&settore=SVIY-5HNGA3_HP), which can claim not only to be the oldest in Italy but also the largest. And this is despite the fact that it has been open to the public for more than eighty years.

This was all made possible by the decisive intervention of the person who the observatory was named after, Ulrico Hoepli, who was born in German-speaking Switzerland. He had wanted to celebrate his eightieth birthday by donating a building dedicated to his inspiring and powerful passion for the science of astronomy to the city he had chosen to be his home since 1870. This passion had previously led him to found a prestigious scientific publishing house which began distributing the important work of the renowned Italian astrophysicist Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli and to publish a good number of essays written at the School of Astronomy of Bera.

The building was significantly damaged during World War II but was then restored in 1955, so that the extraordinary work that has been carried out since the Planetarium’s founding was only temporarily interrupted. 

Paul Oilzum

Watching the projections of the night sky inside this memorable dome while sitting in chairs inspired by early 20th-century barbershops or taking part in courses and lectures for all ages are just some of the many attractions at this observatory you can engage in when you rent apartments in Milan .

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