Encounters: Fashionable Discipline

Milan has always struck me as a schizophrenic city, switching its personality according to the direction from which you approach it. Arriving from the north, it seems warm, colourful, animated and chaotic. But from the south, you find a city which feels cold, grey, sober and disciplined. Certainly, it was the disciplined approach which Milan's financial community was seeking to present to the world on my last visit. It was during the run-up to the privatisation of Eni, the state-owned chemicals