Milan Cathedral - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• The 1934 song "O mia bela Madunina" by Giovanni d'Anzi about the golden Madonna statue on the spire can be considered today an unofficial "city anthem" of Milan.
• Luchino Visconti's 1960 film Rocco e i suoi fratelli, set in Milan, has a scene which takes place on the roof of the cathedral.
• Many Milanese dialect speakers, due to the centuries needed to complete the Duomo, use the "Fabbrica del Duomo" ("Fabrica del Dom" in the dialect) as an adjective (sometimes humorously, sometimes not) to describe an extremely long, too complex task, maybe even impossible to complete.
• The Italian phrase "mangiare a ufo", stemming from the Milanese dialect mangià a uf meaning "being paid for a job not done", comes from the fact that the goods used to build the Duomo wore the inscription "A.U.F.", shorthand for Latin "Ad Usum Fabricae" (to be used for the construction) and were exempt from taxation.
• A souvenir model of the cathedral was thrown at the nose of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi during an attack on December 13, 2009.
• In the song "In Every Age" from the musical Titanic the building is compared with the Pyramids and the Titanic as one of the greatest feats of architecture.
• Several lavish shots of the Duomo are featured in the Italian film I Am Love (2009).
• In the novel "The Wary Transgressor" by James Hadley Chase the main protagonist is seen working as an unofficial guide at the Duomo.