Floating Piers: how Italy learnt to love Christo

In 1970, the year that Christo and Jeanne-Claude first conceived of the Floating Piers, the phenomenally popular installation that closed this weekend on Italys Lake Iseo, the artists wrapped monuments were greeted with hostility in nearby Milan. The Wrapped Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II was undone by the city authorities after two days of protests by ex-servicemen and monarchists, while the Wrapped Monument to Leonardo da Vinci lasted a week before a group of neo-fascists set it on fire.&nbs