San Siro Hippodrome Milan

Staying in a discount hotel close to the San Siro Hippodrome in Milan places you right near to a classic monument as well as this horse racing track. Just outside the Hippodrome is a huge statue of a horse, known as “Leonardo’s Horse”. The massive statue is 7m tall, over 8m long, weighs over 15 tons, and is made completely of solid bronze. 500 years ago the Lord of Sforza instructed Leonardo da Vinci to design the greatest statue ever built. However, during his in 17 years in Milan all Leonardo ever completed was a series of drawings and sketches. In 1977, ex-airline pilot Charles Dent read about the statue that never was - in National Geographic, and set up a foundation, Leonardo da Vinci's Horse Inc, to collect funds in order to finish Leonardo's incomplete project and donate the statue to Italy, to repay of the debt the entire world owed for the Italian Renaissance. Dent never saw the project completed as he died in 1994 and the statue wasn’t finished until 1999.