The white tower, an integral part of the project by Gio Ponti, Antonio Fornaroli, Eugenio Soncini and Nino Bertolaia, became a symbol of the pioneering experiences of Italian television and the point from which the transmission signal actually started for what was being filmed in Corso Sempione and in the historic production centre at Fiera (Milan’s Fair). Still, by the 2010s, an epochal change came from the Fiera itself: towers grew in what was now renamed CityLife, and the tallest one, the Allianz tower by Isozaki and Maffei, obstructed the signal to such an extent that from 2015 on it would itself become the new RAI antenna for Milan.

From the top of Ponti's iconic trellis, however, the heir to the Torre Branca at Triennale, all the changes that have taken place in the city in 70 years – and there are many – are presented en masse to the eyes of those who climb it. Street by street, house by house, there is not a single one escaping the view, from the dwelling visions of a neighboring Piero Bottoni, with his INA skyscraper, coeval with Rai, to the whole of Porta Nuova with the UniCredit and Unipol towers, via the “other” Ponti of Pirelli tower, Kohn Pedersen Fox next to Minoletti, Caccia Dominioni with Zaha Hadid, Magistretti with Gae Aulenti, Pagano with Grafton and SANAA, the long-debated San Siro stadium with QT8 district and Monte Stella, up to another tower that has been standing close to Domus headquarters in Rozzano for decades. Together with Ramak Fazel’s photographs, the images we took as we visited Ponti's Rai tell the whole story of the city’s recent life.