05/10/2026
📍Lo sapevi? 🗞️🇬🇧Today we can enjoy a show at La Scala by purchasing a seat in a box, but it was not always like this. Few know that once the theatre’s boxes were owned by various Milanese families, as if they were small apartments. In those boxes, families spent entire days, arriving long before the show began. They invited friends, ate, and gossiped about other families, spying on them from their own position. Effectively, a pre-litteram social network. Some of these boxes were equipped with mirrors directed at other boxes to observe them better without being noticed! Others even had fireplaces (today disused but still present). And the bathroom? Since entire days were spent in these small boxes, each box had a ceramic pot to relieve oneself. The unbelievable thing is that these pots full of sewage were emptied out of the windows on the street side (Via Verdi) or emptied by valets onto Via Filodrammatici. The hygienic situation in the streets of Milan in those years was so critical that even the nobles had habits and vices criticized by numerous writers like Parini. Did you know?”
