Mille Spighe per una Guglia: Four Seasons Hotels Milano and Firenze Welcome 1,000 Guests as Expo Milano 2015 Begins

A city with centuries-old history is beautiful and precious also because of the symbols that make it unique and the ethical and cultural values that the city champions. Values such as industriousness, inventiveness, generosity addressed to the city’s historical heritage as well as to those in need. These and more are the ideals that have inspired the event that was held on May 14, 2015 in Via della Spiga, in the heart of Milan’s fashion quadrilateral: the street welcomed 1,000 guests for the Milano Expo 2015 opening event, with a special look at the city’s Duomo.

This unconventional open-air dinner party, symbolically called Mille Spighe per una Guglia, or One Thousand Spikes for One Spire (having also a meaningful subtitle, At the Table of the Friends of the Duomo) aimed to combine the Expo’s core theme and Milanese people’s love of the city’s worldwide recognised symbol, the cathedral. This special dinner party, which took place in a truly unique setting, along one of Milan’s most elegant and glamorous streets, was organised by the Friends of Via della Spiga Association, to celebrate the opening of the Universal Exposition and, at the same time, to offer guests the chance to join the Adopt a Spire initiative, which contributes to the restoration and upkeep of the cathedral, Milan’s cultural and artistic symbol and one of its most visited attractions.

And as the unique touch to this unforgettable event, Four Seasons Hotel Firenze and Four Seasons Hotel Milano offered their catering services to ensure the party was a great success. Top-level services, further enhanced by the presence of Vito Mollica, the Micheli- starred Executive Chef of Four Seasons Hotel Firenze and Four Seasons Hotel Milano, which were official partners on the occasion of this eagerly-awaited event. Spikes, which are the grain-bearing parts of wheat, thus, the parts that give flour, bread and pasta, the staples of Italian cuisine, symbolise the nourishment of the spirit which, as Manzoni pointed out in his greatest novel dedicated to Milan, is as essential to man’s existence and happiness as much as bread is. The dinner party was an opportunity to invite guests to look up at the Madonnina atop the cathedral’s main spire and round, at Via della Spiga, with its gleaming and dazzling shop windows filled with Italian-made products - a sort of open-air art installation that made the event held on May 14 an unforgettable experience: a look at the present and a vision for the future.

The official media partner of this event was LUXOS Italia.