The first Central Station in Milano was built in 1864 but by the turn of the 20th century it was apparent that it needed to be replaced.  In 1906 a competition was launched to find a design for a new station.  The winning design from that contest was never built and a second competition was initiated in 1912 and the architect Ulisse Stacchini was selected.  Work didn't actually start on the building until 1924 and the station opened for business in 1931.

The facade of the station is 200 metres wide and the vault is 72 metres high. 






The station handles more than 300,000 passengers a day travelling on 600 trains.  The station suffers from accessibility issues which cause problems in the present day and, as you can see from my photographs taken in June of 2013, a refurbishment is underway to, in part, address those accessibility issues.  €20 million has been allocated to restore "certain areas of high artistic value" and €80 million will be used for more general improvements to the station to make it more functional.

Apparently Stacchini's design was based on Union Station in Washington D. C. and it features numerous sculptures many of them in art deco style.