Deca-circle

Right across the street from Eataly is a second eye-catching building, currently home to Decathlon. As far as I can tell (and seemingly confirmed by this article in Italian), this building was built as part of the Air Terminal complex at the same time as the Eataly building, but I have no idea what it was originally built for -- the only information about that I can find is a brief mention on this page (which has been a big reference for me throughout this series), which (according to Google Translate) says it was designed "to host public and commercial activities" -- not very specific. At some point, it became home to Rocco Balocco, a toy/kids' store that seems to have been more than a little bit inspired by Toys R Us judging by its signage, which doesn't seem to have done much to the store (note the yellow tubular structure that I've been harping on throughout this entire set), but while it avoided sitting abandoned for many years like the main building, Rocco Balocco seems to have been struggling for many years before shutting down for good not long before its US inspiration did. Decathlon took over pretty quickly, but while they kept the main architecture intact, most of the cool interior stuff (most notably the circular glass elevator) is now gone. Maybe next time I'll actually stop in (since I'm sure I'll visit Eataly again!), but I wasn't in the mood this time.