‘Swiss style’ designed subway map for Milan, Italy.  Not unlike Massimo Vignelli‘s fantastic design for the New York City subway.

His NYC MTA map was based on a rationale that the organization of user information below ground was paramount and what happened above ground meant little in terms of navigating the system.  Michael Beirut for Design Observer has a very good explanation as to why NYC’s map sadly was replaced by a map based purely on above ground geography.

What struck me on my trip to photograph this map outside of the obvious graphic beauty and clarity of the map was the schmutz and erosion caused by the visitors way-finding by untold numbers of index fingers stamping the map “So this is where we are…..riiiight here.”  This particular subway stop and subsequent pinpoint on the map happened to be in one of the most tourist latent centers of Italy, Piaza del Duomo; home of the Milan Cathedral and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II arcade.