Daytime Hotel , Piazza Oberdan : the charm of memories from the underground
filled by Giulia & Romeo
Piazza Oberdan , Milan : a few steps down , a small door , and here it is the Belle Epoque.
With its unmistakable Art Nouveau style , with a space that leaves much to the imagination or to memories, depending on age. It even seems to feel out of the gramophone the music of the thirties ...
More than 6,500 people have visited the Daytime Hotel reopened to the public for two days ( Saturday 21 and Sunday March 22 2014) thanks to FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano, www.fondoambiente.it, ) and its volunteers collaboration .
Get off to see what it is hidden , or rather what it was hidden under the asphalt of Piazza Oberdan , it was an adventure and emotion for all visitors . The musty smell that permeates the rooms by pushing a leap into the past, to breathe that air of times gone by and they are not more. Those times when the people that did not have a bathroom in the house , and they were many, could be accessed to the bathrooms by a fee for a dive in the pool, these Art Nouveau glass-tiled bathrooms that make you want immediately to redo the walls of your own bathroom, that appears to you in comparison a bit ' bland. And those who passed for business in the city could fall to shave or to have manicure , or pedicure ... in an environment that appears today full of Belle Epoque atmosphere , despite the scale, despite the cobwebs and mildew ...
In the living room that welcomes the visitor overlook many small booths , each still with the sign of the type of service offered: bath cabins and shower , toilets, a room for wardrobes and ironing room, a private room for business negotiations, tourist agency , a bicycle storage facility and also a postal company .
And not only : you can read they were selling fresh flowers, stationery , magazines and newspapers ... there was a small luggage store , an office photocopying machine , places for shoeshine , a bank office ... a kind of small town business, a commercial centre, we would say today , but with a completely different charm , almost a hammam ...
FAI volunteers with their smiles and their enthusiasm to be taken to the preview respect to all of us to walk in the midst of these memories of the subsoil, to study the details , have contributed to make special the visit to the site of Piazza Oberdan . As they explained to lucky groups that managed to survive the queues , the bathrooms were inaugurated in 1926 and then closed in 1985. Only a lonely hairdresser survived until 2006. The hotel was built on a project of engineer Troiani and the designs of the bathrooms are attributed to the architect Piero Portaluppi .
Walking now over the Daytime Hotel, the only example of gender remained almost intact in Italy, in a square where to remember there are only two tall columns (one was the flue of the boiler of the bathrooms ) and an old shelter Liberty, after seeing what lies beneath you feel strong emotions. Now the question that much people have is: why leave a so beautiful and fascinating space closed to the public? FAI volunteers are promoting the reopening , but there are a lot of problems to solve…
In the meantime you can listen to the interview at the last Daytime Hotel hairdresser and barber…
The video about the Daytime Metropolitan Hotel Piazza Oberdan in Milan was built in 1994 by students of the second year of the Vocational Training Centre for Technical cinetv Maria Arena, Andrea Beltrame, Fabrizio Fanelli, Daniele Lago, Eva Piccoli , Simona Pezzano with the participation of Carmelo Aiello (hairdresser for men) and Mr. Vitale Imbros (ladies' hairdresser).
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