Telling stories has never been more colorful than since street art has become an increasingly popular means of expression through murals and graffiti on the streets of Milan, in the suburbs and beyond! A transformation into street art city – we could say! – that sees a growing patronage by the City of Milan, which is interested in involving Milanese and international street artists as part of a broader project to enhance neighborhoods and their very personal identity.
If we were to draw an ideal street art map, the must-see points of interest, murals and graffiti would be scattered just about everywhere in Milan – from the Navigli toIsola – but certainly could not miss a special mention for the Ortica neighborhood.
Right here in the eastern suburbs, since 2015 the project has taken shape. Or.Me. – Nettle Memory , who is credited with transforming the historic suburb now part of City Hall 3 into a colorful open-air museum, a collection of splendid murals by the Orticanoodles collective, capable of bringing to life “in color” the history of Milan, scattered on walls, streets, overpasses and urban buildings.
That’s why, if you are still tempted to imagine Milan ‘s outermost neighborhoods as areas of the city shrouded in fog and grayness, it is worthwhile to start exploring Milan’s metropolitan treasures starting right from the streets ofOrtica, now a creative post-industrial hub but once a land of cultivated fields and vegetable gardens… as the very name of the neighborhood still reminds us!
At the Nettle gardens: an explosion of flowers and colors!
It is no coincidence, then, that the most photographed mural in Ortica is the explosive pattern of leaves and flowers painted in bright hues on the wall of a house located precisely at 12 Via Ortica. Dedicated to the vegetable gardens of Ortica, the work created by the Orticanoodles is a poetic tribute to the agricultural past of this hamlet once outside the city of Milan, where the waters of the Lambro irrigated, every day, the cultivated lands. Only from the end of the nineteenth century did the suburb take on a very different physiognomy, becoming an important industrial district of twentieth-century Milan, thanks to the passage of the Milan-Treviglio railway line and the presence of numerous factories, first and foremost the Innocenti Factory, the production site of the famous Lambretta… so called in reference to the Lambro river that flowed not far from the factories.
A riot of flowers, colors and fertility, the mural on Via Ortica also commemorates the tragedies of the two world wars: the many red poppies in the composition are in fact the flowers that, throughout Europe, symbolize the tribute to war victims, chosen to bloom today on the city’s walls as a call for peace and remembrance.
Murals and graffitito the women who made the 1900s great in Milan and beyond
The narrative path that winds among the street art works of Ortica, between memory, urban redevelopment and social commitment, also gathers on the walls of the neighborhood the most important figures in the history of the twentieth century. Among the many colorful faces that one can encounter walking through the streets of this area of Milan, it is impossible not to dwell on the exhibition dedicated to the women who contributed to women’s emancipation and the development of Italian culture in Milan: journalist Camilla Cederna, and poet Alda Merini; Ersilia Bronzini Majno, founder of the Asilo Mariuccia, alongside activists Alessandrina Ravizza and Anna Kuliscioff; photographer and poet Antonia Pozzi; anti-fascist politician Maddalena Rossi; and, finally, Senator Liliana Segre, a witness who survived the tragedy of the Holocaust.
A feminine journey through Milan’s most recent history, relived through the portraits of the great protagonists who, in the colors of red and yellow, populate the facade of ITIS Pasolini, on Trentacoste Street.
Homage to the cathedral, a poem etched in marble
The latest unmissable masterpiece, among the many in the Ortica neighborhood, is the series of murals and graffiti dedicated to the Duomo of Milan, which recently appeared on the walls of Via Pitteri and is destined to be enriched with new images around the neighborhood. To the historical, political and social themes touched upon by the Orticanoodles collective in the Or.Me. project is added the celebration of the Milanese cathedral, an icon of the city and its most authentic religious and artistic identity. The first works of a street art version of the “Fabbrica del Duomo dell’Ortica” are the view of the cathedral’s nave, on a scale of one to two, and the painted Madonnina, a full 25 meters high. Both murals, painted in front of each other, choose a palette played entirely on ochre…the reason? The preference for an ambient palette that recalls, right in the heart of the Ortica neighborhood, the colors of the most typically Milanese railing houses, under the banner of a constant dialogue between present and past.
Curious to discover street art and graffiti in Milan? Don’t miss all the initiatives of Neiade Tour & Events
Street Art Tour, Ticinese District and Navigli
Street Art in Milan, guided tours among the colors of the city
