The Bernina Express deposited me in northern Italy, where a bevy of airports offered flights back to London.

Some internet sleuthing decided me on Milan, a city too glorious for the meagre half day my itinerary afforded it — but too marvelous to pass up the chance of visiting either, however brief.

I determined to brush off my Italian and attend an early mass at the Duomo, Milan’s crown jewel: a Gothic cathedral of dazzling proportions.

The delicacy and solemnity of towering stone and twisting glass answered my every yearning for that particular sense of the sacred found only in the “height and light” of neogothic architecture.

If anything, the exterior impressed me more than the inside: figures ornament the walls like alcoves or flowerboxes might in another building. Any one of the statues might claim a place of pride elsewhere, but on the heights of the Duomo they flocked like birds – each individually lovely, yet dissolved into the loveliness of the whole.

I might have passed hours absorbed in admiring the artistry that so richly adorned every surface, but the city’s other treasures beckoned…

(to be continued)