Just after WWII’s bombings Milano, my own town, was completely in ruins… and, at the same time, about to accommodate one of the biggest migratory movements of the century. Hundreds of thousands of workers were moving from southern Italy to the wealthy north, and they were missing houses, sure, but also churches: masses were celebrated in improvised sheds, often built with Asbestos.

The Catholic Church, therefore, set up one of the most impressive building efforts of her recent history, building, in slightly more than a decade, dozens of new churches. Nowadays a ring of about 100 of those surrounds the center of Milan. I‘ve always been struck by those buildings, and, as a non-christian, I’ve always tried to understand how that huge concrete (both in a metaphorical and a literal sense) blocks could represent the house of God on hearth, or the doors to transcendence for humanity.

Between 2014 and 2015, as part of a bigger project, I’ve hence mapped and photographed all these churches, together with their oratories, their furniture, and the handful of believers that still attended them. In the process, I’ve learned that some of these churches are architectural masterpieces while others are distortions, sketches or manglings of the original projects… some are imposing, others are modest, some look threatening, others funny. Put together it’s hardly understandable if they speak the language of a dystopian future or the one of a utopian past. Probably a mix of both.

Certainly, they’re a testimony of the past of the city, but also of its present, and maybe of our future: the aim of this investigation isn’t to make a point merely on one city, but to use Milano as a gateway, or a metaphor, to speak about spirituality in our age, and about the ways it manifests itself, both stoically and materially. Here a small selection of pictures from the project.