The Green Stuff

It doesn't look like much, but that's actually an extremely rare station sign. The Milan Metro has two types of entrance; in the main, they're voids in the street, stairs and escalators and lifts disappearing beneath the pavement. In some cases, such as at Pero, there's a small pavilion covering the entrance, to make it more noticeable. Only at Lanza is there an entrance actually constructed inside a non-Metro building, as you'd find in many other cities round the world. I'm not sure why Lanza got this special treatment.This may be as good a place as any to complain about the street presence of the Metro. Pretty much every station entrance looks something like this:A low wall surrounding a staircase down, with a red flag with a white M acting as the signpost that the Metro is here. The actual name of the station is tucked away. You can just about see it if you look down, but the best spot to read it is when you're halfway down the stairs. That's strange to me. It meant a great deal of…