I’m doing a little twirl in Milan’s magnificent shopping arcade, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, trying not to look like a complete idiot. Tradition has it that spinning round three times with your heel on the testicles of the dancing bull on the mosaic floor will bring good luck. Yes, it’s cheesy, it takes cohones, but who could resist? I’m not the only one who wants to have a go: a crowd of Japanese tourists is queuing up behind me.
The bull marks the spot where the galleria’s unfortunate architect Giuseppe Mengoni plunged from the scaffolding to his death in 1877, just weeks before the opening of his grandiose iron and glass temple of consumerism. It connects the city’s most famous landmarks, the enormous Gothic