Verziere Column

"We leave the cathedral and walk past Piazza Fontana, we arrive at Largo Augusto. This part of Milan once hosted the big market of fruit and vegetables and was called as well "Verziere" which literally means the cabbage seller. There, in the year 1673, the column with the Christ Redeemer was put as a gratitude sign that the plague was over. The legend says that in the beginning, the Christ was looking left, in the direction of the Verziere and the vicolo of San Bernardino dei Morti. But three months later...surprise! The Christ was now looking in the opposite direction, towards via Durini. Many rumors were born to explain this uncommon situation, the most famous was the legend of Barbarinetta. Barbarinetta was probably the most beautiful girl in the whole Verziere suburb, she was living with her parents in a house on the corner of Via Durini, at the corner of the Verziere. Three months after the column was inaugurated, she was coming home late in the evening with her father, after attending a wedding. They ran into a group of malicious guys who wounded and robbed the father and kidnapped Barbarinetta. They brought her to a farm outside of the city and when the situation was getting worse, when a young knight who was passing by heard her screaming, so he broke into the den and saved her. Being a beautiful young man, Barbarinetta fell in love with him and he was with her. Unfortunately, he was wanted for a crime and soon he was caught and sentenced to death exactly under the statute of the Verziere. She saw the building of the scaffold from her balcony and when it was time for her beloved to die, she could not stand the pain and threw herself out of the balcony. That was the moment when the Christ turned his head. At the moment, it is not possible to look at the column as it has been removed to allow the building of the 4th line of the Subway, but in the removal of the column there has been found another column inside the actual one, much more ancient, and this is visible now. "