Fair people

Without all the men and women who stream through its turnstiles, the fairgrounds would be no more than a giant and silent expanse of stands, pavilions, and tree-lined avenues. 

But with its gates open to the world, it comes alive with colours, shapes, faces, languages, cultures, and expectations. This is what brings out the best in Fiera di Milano, as it reinvents itself every year in ever new forms and experiences.

“What matters is not just the extraordinary growth the fair enjoyed, but the dual meaning such growth came to take on, as an engine of growth for the domestic and world economy as a whole, and as an indicator of such growth."

"A meaning of precious importance, because it enables the fair to be a driver towards a specific vision of economic, social, and cultural integration.”

As with any exhibition, walking—and observing—is the main activity visitors engage in. With the fairgrounds covering almost two million square metres of space, however, seeing the whole fair could be quite a feat, an achievement in itself.

Wandering around the fairgrounds one can come across, today just like yesterday, people dressed in their Sunday best, resting on the margins of the itinerary, waiting for friends or family to finish their visit to a stand, or others getting ready for another business meeting.

Episodes like these have been captured by numerous photographers—both professionals and amateurs—as they toured the fairgrounds with their cameras around their necks, immortalizing, with a pinch of humour, the curious of expressions on the faces of the people they came across.

For Fiera di Milano is not just serious business, but also a vivid and colourful snapshot of Italy and its people.

It is also one of the world’s leading venues by visitor numbers, events hosted, and exhibition space. 

This achievement has come thanks not only to the organizers of the various events and the big international brands hosted, but also to the many professionals that keep the wheels of the fairgrounds turning

—from the machinery operators and security guards to service staff and stand fitters. These skilled and specialist workers are the people who allow the fairgrounds to thrive and identify fully with the city of Milan and the quality of the events proposed.

Their diverse, yet complementary perspectives tell a different story of the fair, one which shifts the products exhibited, industrial machines, and business people into the background, to shine a light instead on what ordinarily remains in the shadows. 

The scenes of daily life they show, captured in a variegated geometry of faces, figures, and forms, highlight their role as the living, breathing foundations of the grand theatre in which the great show of the Milan Fair was staged every year.

All of this, however, is still not complete. Which brings us to the exhibitors—the true magnet of attraction of the Milan fairgrounds. Without them, no fair each year would be the memorable moment that it is.

Thus we have the cornerstone closing and completing the complex architecture of the fairground and its fairs.

From its balconies we can still see all the faces that over the decades have enabled it to be and remain the strong, stable driver that it is, a valid model of reference for the Italian economy and its industries.