I don't do a lot of street photography, which is something that I think I shall (and indeed do) regret. In particular, I regret not doing more of it in Italia. This, however, wasn't technically street photography. It was something far more fortuitous.

2016 was before I started using the Olympus GPS app (which is painful, but generally accurate) to track my photos. I therefore periodically needed to take a photo of street signs and the like to be able to match the photos with their location. That is exactly what I was doing here when this guy just walked through the shot, and mightily glad I am that he did.

He is clearly a businessman of some description from his well styled and well-fitting suit; he has obviously also been out to buy something, probably at a nice store from the style of the bag. He is on his phone, because... well, it is the 21st century.

But you could stand here in this spot for a year, 5 years, 10 years, and you will probably never again capture someone in midstride who looks like this guy, on a day which has this kind of sun creating intense light on the buildings, and a strong shadow that you can see at the bottom of the screen.

In other words, this scene occurred once, exactly once in history, and will probably never be repeated. It is one of millions of scenes that will play out in thousands of cities across the world and will never exactly be repeated, nor captured in a photo.

The scene itself is of no great intrinsic importance. I have no idea who the man is, and probably never will. He probably doesn't even remember that day, coming up to 7 years after this shot was taken. But it's not the supposedly "important" shots that will matter when people look back and want to know what life was like a generation before them. It's shots like this, showing ordinary people going about their ordinary business.

So grazie, signore, for putting in an appearance just at the right time.

Oh, I suppose I should make some mention of where we are. We're still on the walking tour that started at the mural of the Last Supper. At the moment, we are walking back towards the historic centre of Milano and in particular, the Duomo (cathedral) at the centre of town. This is the intersection of Piazza Cordusio, and Via Broletto.

The first of these is the historic business centre which has many historic buildings which were once headquarters for many of Milano's grander companies; banks, post offices, insurance companies, that kind of thing. We'll see some photos of it later on. So who or what was it named after?

It was named after the Cors Ducis (Ducal court) which existed in this area during the Longobard era, 568-774 AD.

You may be able to see a plaque on the wall on the far side of the window behind the man; that is a plaque to the memory of Alfredo Pizzoni (1894-1958), a banker who was born in Cremona, but worked in Milano including as a partisan in the later stages of World War II. I'm not sure what if any his connection with that specific building is, or whether it's just a general recognition memorial.

Via Broletto is also named after a "what" rather than a "who". In most of Italia the town hall is called the "municipio". "Broletto" is a term specific to Lombardia which can mean the same thing, or it can refer to a walled field.