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which met with the Piazza del Duomo on the diagonal, seemed an impossible site for a regular piazza in axial relationship to the cathedral. In none of the many projects was its existence ever questioned. Between 1838 and 1863 many proposals for the Piazza del Duomo were submitted by architects and non-architects alike; these proposals will be analyzed here in relation to the idea of an arcade. The idea of connecting the Piazza del Duomo to the Piazza della Scala or to the Piazza S. Fedele with a street or an arcade was taken up time after time and finally became part of the official program. Several projects are known from before the era of the political developments which led to Italy's unification and accelerated Piazza del Duomo project. I will describe them briefly here.

The architect Carlo Amati envisioned a cathedral square expanded to the west, north, and south which would be bordered by arcaded walkways surrounding the square in a semicircle on the west side. A through street was planned only for the cathedral axis.⁵⁰⁹

Beccaria proposed a wider square, ar-caded, U-shaped, and strictly related to the cathedral. It would continue in two sections on the north side and echo the transept facade of the cathedral.⁵¹⁰

Caimi submitted two proposals.⁵¹¹ The first was similar to Beccaria's; the other en-visioned a polygonal enclosure of the square on the west and one running straight across on the north. A path desig-nated as a bazaar is included, however, ap-proximately at the present entrance to the arcade, connecting the Piazza del Duomo to the Piazza S. Fedele. An octagonal space was planned for the center of the arcade; this widening corresponds almost exactly to Mengoni's proposal of 1863 even though Mengoni's arcade led to the Piazza della Scala. Mengoni was clearly influ-enced by Caimi's suggestion.

The planning for the cathedral square moved into the stage of concrete proposals and estimates with the political events of 1859, which were decisive in ushering in the unification movement in Italy. After the victory at Magenta on June 4, Napo-leon III (who had commanded the French troops) and Vittorio Emanuele entered the city of Milan side by side. On June 10 Count Luigi Belgioioso was named the commander of liberated Milan.⁵¹² He saw his most important task as following

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Milan, Piazza del
Duomo before 1850

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Milan, Piazza del
Duomo and Galleria
Vittorio Emanuele II,
1900