Milan, ITALY - Central Station - 1927:  Milano Centrale (Italian: Stazione di Milano Centrale) is the main railway station of the city of Milan, Italy, and is the largest railway station in Europe by volume. The station is a terminus and located at the northern end of central Milan. It was officially inaugurated in 1931 to replace the old central station (built 1864), which was a transit station but with a limited number of tracks and space, so could not handle the increased traffic caused by the opening of the Simplon Tunnel in 1906.  Milano Centrale has high-speed connections to Turin in the west, Venice via Verona in the east and on the north–south mainline to Bologna, Rome, Naples and Salerno. The Simplon and Gotthard railway lines connect Milano Centrale to Basel and Geneva via Domodossola and Zürich via Chiasso in Switzerland.  King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy laid the cornerstone of the new station on 28 April 1906, before a blueprint for the station had even been chosen. The last, real, contest for its construction was won in 1912 by architect Ulisse Stacchini, whose design was modeled after Washington Union Station in Washington, DC, and the construction of the new station began. The purported style was an eclectic mix called "Assyrian-Lombard."  Due to the Italian economic crisis during World War I, construction proceeded very slowly, and the project, rather simple at the beginning, kept changing and became more and more complex and majestic. This happened especially when Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister and wanted the station to represent the power of the Fascist regime.  The major changes were the new platform types and the introduction of the great steel canopies by Alberto Fava; 341 m (1,119 ft) long and covering an area of 66,500 square meters (716,000 sq ft). Construction resumed in 1925, and on 1 July 1931 the station was officially opened in the presence of Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano.  This Linen Era postcard, mailed in 1927, is in good condition.